


Under the Knife

by gingerpunches



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, Gen, M/M, Mild Gore, Railroad as family, Slow Burn, Team as Family, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, actual spy deacon, my wanderer is trans jsyk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2018-09-10 19:21:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8933401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerpunches/pseuds/gingerpunches
Summary: He starts up Project Wanderer on a whim. With no leads and the Institute already on their heels, he has no time, and really no place, to keep the damn project going. He’d hoped it’d bear fruit - or, at least, a walking, talking chance for the Railroad. He wasn’t prepared for the major amounts of cardio he would pick up after it panned out. 
(Or the heartache. But he won’t talk about that)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on how to write a Deacon romance, especially considering some of the things he says to Wanderer if you get on his good side. I decided to run with it and write something that fits my personal canon, but I'll try to keep this as open as possible. If there are any glaring spelling or grammar mistakes let me know.
> 
> EDIT: I've updated the previous chapters as well as added more. I'm trying to control the flow as well as the integrity of these characters, so if something still seems off, let me know!
> 
> EDIT: Also a new summary that better describes the story!

+++

 

Sometime in the winter of 2284, when there’s ice crunching under his boots and snow banking around rivers, he finds a Vault. Not a big one; actually pretty small by Vault-Tec standards. But it’s a Vault, which by its own right is a find of the year, so he wraps his layers tighter, hefts his rifle, and breaks inside. Evidence of Gunners and other raider activity is evident, but everything has been looted already, stripped clean to the barest of materials around, to the things not even the most desperate would take: empty crates, trash cans, moldy mattresses and empty shell casings from every weapon Deacon could think of.

He shuffles through the detritus, occasionally picking up casings he recognizes to be reused later while also stopping at every terminal he can reach and unlock. Most of it is the usual Vault-Tec fare - odd social experiments and personal logs, with this particular Vault being an investigation of criminals put into power of Overseer. It’s boring and the evidence of its success is clear all around him. He gets bored by the time he reaches the Overseer’s office, but once he unlocks the terminal at the desk and starts reading, he has a smile on his face.

A Vault, similar in size to this one, but further north. It’s in a place called “Sanctuary”: a tiny development that was intended to be the future of American neighbourhoods, with its advanced technology, a Mr.Handy in every home, and its diverse population. He doesn’t know what information on this Vault is doing in this one until he finds a cigar box full of Vault-Tec holotapes under the desk, each one labeled with other Vaults in the area. Each one has recorded bare-bones information on them, but it’s enough: the one in Sanctuary piques his interest. 

A cryo-Vault. Not a normal vault. Its residents were skimmed from the population in Sanctuary, men and women and children alike, each completely unrelated except for the neighbourhood they all lived in. They weren’t aware of the Vault’s true intentions, even when they were given vault suits and shoved into cryopods. The whole thing is normal for Vault-Tec, but the fact that it’s a freezer is what matters. Not only to him; his friendly neighbourhood opposition wouldn’t be so stupid to pass up the opportunities a pre-war ice cube could present them. 

He scoops the cigar box full of holotapes into his pack and worms his way back out of the darkness of the Vault onto the surface. He’s too excited to feel the cold nipping at his fingers as he practically sprints across the ‘Wealth back to HQ, where he dumps his stash of Vault tapes into a safe he dug into the floor of his room before he tells Dez he has a lead on some ghosts and leaves again. She barely has time to give him an odd look as he presses past her for the escape tunnel. 

Sanctuary is located near the mountains in the north-western tip of the Commonwealth. A river runs through it, and a forest that stretches up to the mountains themselves rings behind it as a road that was never finished winds up the hills to the entrance of the Vault. Skeletons of people and military equipment litter the way up to the Vault’s subterranean elevator, and when he steps on the elevator itself, nothing happens. More scouting reveals a working terminal and button that activates the elevator, and he deigns not to mess with it for now. He only looks around long enough to confirm that it’s the refrigerator he wants - Vault 111, excuse him - before he sets up camp up the hill above the Vault. Far enough away to not be noticed, but close enough to observe through binoculars. 

His project reveals nothing for a long couple of years. By the time 2286 rolls by, a part of him is ready to call it quits - if the Institute wasn’t interested now, when their synths were already walking and talking like real humans, they wouldn’t be now. But he waits it out. He shows up every week to do some observations, check the elevator, make sure no one has disturbed it, and then he takes off again to work that bears fruit. 

He worries and he waits for three years. Just when he’s about to really abandon his project and cut his losses, a loud  _ boom _ echoes from the Vault’s direction as he lounges in his chair, enjoying the previously quiet afternoon, and as he fumbles with his binoculars, a man in a Vault 111 jumpsuit steps off the Vault’s elevator platform.

Deacon worries no more. He tells Dez that Project Wanderer, on a chilly spring day in 2287, is a resounding success. 

 

+++

Of course someone was going to walk out of that Vault. He knew from the beginning  _ someone _ , somewhere, was either going to walk in and come back out, or someone from the Vault itself, who had been a resident, was going to walk out. He was hoping to catch an Institute spy or a Courser, because at least he knows how to deal with those things. Usually they want to kill him, and he’s good at killing back, so it would have been simple and easy if things had come to that. 

But the smallest of possibilities he had considered had come true. So now he had a walking popsicle roaming the ‘Wealth, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing wasn’t totally apparent when his prize took his first steps into a brave new world. It really still wasn’t - he’d been tailing Wanderer for close to a month before he’d learned his name. His moral ambiguity still stood, and while for good reason, Deacon was still left confused every time his target went back home to Sanctuary after a long day of wiping raiders off the map.

Maybe it was shock. Deacon wouldn’t put it past him. While he had grown up in this world, this world post-apocalypse, his target -  _ Nate _ was his name - hadn’t. He was probably some rich kid that grew up with the world under his thumb only to have it taken away from him when some bigger fish decided it was time to end it all. A world where every day amenities were taken away and replaced with holes in the ground to shit in was probably the most culture shock someone could possibly experience all at once. 

So he left Nate to it. Deacon backed off, just the tiniest bit, but when he got word his target was moving, he would move with him. He was there during the argument between Nate, Piper, and the Diamond City Mayor. He was there when Wanderer met Hancock and shook his hand while blood still dripped off the ghoul’s fingers. He was there during his first visit to Bunker Hill, hidden behind the bhramin his mercenary group was escorting halfway across the ‘Wealth. His target became more popular, and more dangerous, and with each turn he learned more about him despite his place in the shadows. 

Deacon learned about his past: about the bomb blast eating up everything in its path as he and his wife and his baby boy descended into the cold dark of the Vault. About being frozen, only to wake up to witness his son’s kidnapping at the hands of some mercenary and two people in hazmat suits, and his wife’s murder. But instead of the cryopod spitting him out onto the Vault’s floor to face the reality of his love’s death, he was frozen again, to be woken ten years later to the world when there was nothing to be done. He’d made it his duty to find his baby boy - now a ten year old kid - if not for himself, then for his dead spouse. Even after the hundredth time Nate had told this story, Deacon’s heart still ached.

A part of him knew what it all felt like. 

He knew the little moments, too. Small things that Nate probably didn’t even know himself. But when he started to stumble down the Freedom Trail - a half-baked attempt to find people that truly believed in the Railroad’s cause, forgotten only because Deacon had started Project Wanderer - Deacon backed off. He was too close to HQ for comfort, and he knew Dez had people watching Nate as soon as he started to sniff around the Old North Church. So he disappeared, like he always did, and when he returned to HQ the back way and found Nate standing in the floodlights in front of Dez, covered in mud and dirt with a dog snarling behind him and good ol’ Nick Valentine pointing a laser rifle over his shoulder, he knew his time had come. 

Because what’s a play without a good entrance?

 

+++


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want you all to know that the filename for this fic is """"pal"""".

+++

 

“You vouched for me? Why?”

The incredulousness in Nate’s voice was pretty much a constant. The guy encountered something new and unusual on a daily basis, with the most unusual at this point being that family that were practically immortal because of some weird brain serum. Super mutants and robots controlled by pre-war human brains topped the list, but when they’d stumbled into the Cabot house that fateful groggy morning, Nate still couldn’t look that family in the face without blurting out “so you’re vampires, right?”

“Look, pal,” Deacon starts.  He’s got himself wedged between Nate and the wall, mostly because Nate is scoping out a place with his rifle and they both couldn’t find ample enough cover for the both of them. Nate’s body is warm where it’s curled up against him, and Deacon can pretend that it’s not in the negatives with the start of a snow flurry outside. “Let’s just say I’m incredibly well informed with a master network of birds and bees keeping an eye on you. With the shit you’ve done, of course I would vouch for you.”

Nate snorts into his scope. He adjusts sight just a small bit as he swings the rifle around to face the other end of the parking structure these particular raiders have built up into their base. The snow reflects the lights they’ve strung up between the floors, and in the twilight of the evening Deacon can see a line of raiders trudging down the street adjacent to their base. The one in the rear has a dogsled attached to some ropes that he has wrapped around his shoulders as he pulls it. His two buddies in front of him are throwing snowballs at each other. 

Deacon scoots up closer to Nate’s right side and rests his own rifle over the concrete barrier he’s using as a tripod for his own. Nate smiles at him from the corner of his eye as Deacon yanks his hood up. “So what’s the plan?  You take Dogmeat through the front while I scope them from up here?”

“Sure,” Nate says, and his smile suddenly turns sly. A flush runs up Deacon’s spine despite the safety of his sunglasses and his knee-jerk schooled expression. “As long as you use your birds and bees to keep an eye on me.” 

It’s an offhanded remark that Deacon really doesn’t get to sit on before Nate is scrambling down from the fourth floor of the blown-out post office they’ve been using as cover for the past three hours. Dogmeat huffs as he picks his way down after him, his doggie armor silent as he pads down the stairs to follow his master. 

Deacon follows his two companions with his rifle as he sits safely behind his wall, breath fuming up in front of him as he takes slow, deep breaths, leaning into his stock. Nate picks his way across the snow, his clothes dark on bright white, but the darkness hides him well. He sends Dogmeat out in front of him to scout, and even from his trained ear, Deacon doesn’t hear the first silenced shot Nate takes at a guard near an outside entrance to the parking structure. He swings his scope around the area as Nate hides the body and sends Dogmeat inside the raider base, only returning to the spot they were when Nate is safely inside. 

There isn’t much activity for maybe fifteen minutes. Deacon counts his breaths, treating each one like he has to squeeze the trigger. The floors of the parking structure are mostly boarded over with wood and metal and old car parts, but there are flashes of light and activity every couple of feet, like someone had wanted to put in windows but protection took precedent so they compromised. He scopes around until he spots Nate through one of these spaces, but after about thirty seconds he loses him again. So he waits some more, his legs tucked under himself, keeping his breathing even. 

Another ten minutes pass, and just when he thinks he should follow Nate down and see what’s taking him so long, an explosion blooms bright and hot on the fourth floor of the garage. It cracks loudly across the snowy plain, startling birds out of their nests. The pepper of gunfire starts not long after, both in the structure and in the nearby town. Deacon barely has time to scramble to his feet and kick their duffels under a nearby collapsed bed before he’s sprinting down the stairs of their cover and bounding through the snow towards the raider base. 

The first floor is pretty much clear save for the occasional raider scum shuffling around in confused anger. A couple take some potshots at him but he quickly eliminates them with his rifle - he stays low and quiet even as the fires from the explosion starts a chain of ever-increasing booms - from a car’s nuclear core? Bombs the raiders had? Nate? - and the rattle of gunfire continues above him. His body tenses under the familiar rush of adrenaline and fear, his sunglasses fogging as the heat from the flames and the cold from outside permeates the old cement of the building. 

The second floor has more bogies. They’re prepared this time, having heard his loud rifle shots he didn’t bother to silence with the barrel silencer in his duffel back at the post office. Before he can duck for cover as he rounds the corner, one of the more gifted raiders nails him in the side, ripping his coat and slashing clear through his layers to his skin. It burns, but it doesn’t feel like he’s being stabbed, so he knows he was only scraped as the bullet flew past him. He squats down as far as he can on his haunches and scopes down the one that shot him and squeezes the trigger, the sound of the rifle bouncing off the ceiling and walls with a crack. The raider jerks as the bullet travels through his skull, and then he drops, his friends around him taking only a second to watch as he falls to the floor before they raise their weapons too. 

Deacon drops them as well while shuffling along to the ramp that leads to the third floor. The raiders seem to have structured most of their living quarters above the first floor, with a lot of the beds and cooking equipment being lumped on the second floor. It makes it hard for Deacon to properly navigate the maze - there are wooden cabins and metal rooms, some with doors for privacy and others with just a mattress shoved against any cover that will protect them from the cold. He knocks over a barrel with a burning flame inside it, just narrowly jumping over the embers it spills out as he tries to hurry to where he can hear a dog barking above him. It takes him longer than he wants, but the gunfire carrying on gives him a little bit of hope - if the raiders are still fighting, then Nate is too. 

The third floor is boiling hot. Flames lick and drip from cracks in the ceiling, and already the raider encampment is being eaten up in fire. Smoke is beginning to fog Deacon’s vision and make him cough, so he pulls up the scarf around his neck over his mouth and nose as he picks his way over burning mattresses and crates with weapons. This floor is abandoned, with some raider bodies littering the ground, bullet wounds through their heads or chests. Blood glitters in the firelight as Deacon steps over the bodies - the holes are big, good indications of Nate’s own rifle putting them down. Besides the bodies, no raiders are to be found, so Deacon takes a deep breath and steps onto the platform leading up to the fourth floor, the Dogmeat’s ringing barks rattling in his skull.

Flames bright and hot leap up towards the sky as he steps up onto the top floor of the parking structure. The remains of what was a car are melting under them, its nuclear core having been the source of the explosion. From what Deacon can see, a chain reaction caused a couple other cars to detonate as well - the hot scrap is burning in a large radius around the fire. Bodies litter the floor as well, but in a more erratic fashion, all with their weapons in their hands. 

A bullet pings off the cement to his right before he can get much further. He squats down and shuffles to cover behind a car (not the best of his ideas considering the fires raging near him), swings his rifle over the hood, and stares down to the other side of the parking lot where the bullet came from. 

Raiders - not many, maybe eight or ten - surround a small metal structure that’d been built around a light pole. It’s connected to a generator under the corrugated iron awning that’s already smoking from several bullet holes blasted into its face, and the metal door already has dents from where two Raiders are banging the shit out of it with bats and the butts of their guns. A raider standing near the back of the pack, watching their lackeys work, is dressed in power armor, the suit intact with spikes welded onto the shoulders and arms and a working minigun sitting next to their feet. 

Well. They found their target. No wonder Nate was pinned down. 

Deacon snuck around the rear end of the car he was hiding behind and took down the nearest raider as quietly as he could, slinging his rifle over his shoulder before jerking the raider down with his hand over the man’s mouth and other arm around his neck. He snaps his neck and drags him back behind cover before taking down the next one, doing the same to her. With two down, the outer lookouts are gone, but three still stand around the one in the power suit, the two banging on the door don’t seem to give up, and Deacon swears he sees one sneaking around the back of the structure Nate is holed up in. 

So that means seven total. Dogmeat is still barking, but it doesn’t seem to be out of fear or anger - Deacon has been travelling with Nate long enough (and spied on him long enough) to know that he’s trained the dog well to do a great many tasks. Dogmeat seems to really be barking just to make noise, and as Deacon crawls closer, rifle at the ready, he can hear him pacing, nails scraping the wooden floorboards as he scrambles through the structure, barking. 

A sudden crack from the direction of the structure’s door makes Deacon turn his head. One of the two raiders banging on it has broken it off one of its hinges, and with the newfound break, the two of them start to kick it down, the wood splintering around the poorly affixed door as it comes down one blow at a time. In less than fifteen seconds the door is down and the raiders are pushing inside, guns drawn, and Deacon is about to hop over his cover and start shooting to make noise and draw attention when a missile screams through the open door, over the raider’s heads, and explodes square on the big suited raider with the minigun. 

When the smoke clears, the raider is on their back, the helmet - and their head - missing from the armor. The three raiders that had been standing around them were pushed back from the force of the missile explosion, and instead of hopping up and fighting for their lives, they seem to think twice in the face of their dead leader. Deacon watches with an amused quirk of his brow as they fumble with their weapons, get to their feet, and scamper towards the lower floors with their metaphorical tails between their legs. The two that had broken the door seem to be in a state of shock, their jaws hanging open, and don’t notice Nate coming up behind them and shooting the both of them in the back of the head with his handgun. 

Their bodies drop to the ground as Deacon comes out from his cover. Nate steps out of the structure, a cut above his eyebrow bleeding down his face and a slight limp to his right leg, but otherwise unscathed. Dogmeat bolts out the door and scrambles around the back of the structure where a yell bounces around the corner as he sinks his teeth into whoever had been sneaking around the back. Both Deacon and Nate follow their dog to where he’s snarling and dragging his catch out behind the building, and with a wordless nod from Nate, Deacon drags Dogmeat off before Nate shoots the man in the head with his rifle. Deacon lets go of Dogmeat’s collar, his four-legged companion calming down immediately with the threat terminated, and then wanders off to go sniff out useful things they need to pick up before they go. 

“Nice and quiet, huh, Boss?” Deacon says, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t fight the smile from his face. “Pretty sure this is as loud as you can get.”

Nate shrugs off some dirt and dust from his jacket. Snow is beginning to fall, and it sticks in his hair and on the fur lining of his jacket. Even behind the safety of his sunglasses, Deacon tries not to stare. 

“I just wanted power armor to fix that suit I got in Concord, but I guess sneaking in and taking it wasn’t so easy,” Nate says. He touches the cut above his brow and frowns at the blood that comes away on his fingers. “I took the elevator up and everything. But I guess they rigged the whole thing to go up if someone even sneezes in the direction of that power armor.”

Deacon snorts. “Well, you only scorched the place a tiny bit. I’m sure the armor’s fine with that big missile hole in it.”

Nate smiles sheepishly, and despite the bloodshed at his own hands, he seems genuinely guilty. Deacon follows him over to the power armor, helps him with a quick inspection - most of the inner workings were fine, but the chest cavity was blasted in, and the helmet nowhere to be found - and deems it a loss. Nate sighs in frustration before he whistles for Dogmeat to follow him down the ramp to the lower floors. Deacon nabs a nice pair of boots off a dead body as they pass by the living quarters on the second floor.

They shake out a battered map back at the post office and lay it out on an upturned dresser. Deacon really doesn’t want to go anywhere now that they’ve had their fill of adrenaline, but they’re both wounded and need a place to stay for a couple days. He halfheartedly begins to take off his layers to wrap his wound as he talks. 

“I think Graygarden or Oberland Station are close by,” he starts. “Maybe ten miles at most. We could hike there tonight while it’s still dark and rest there.”

Dogmeat whines at Nate’s feet as Nate tries to gauge his own wounds without undressing. His jeans on the outside of his right leg are blooming dark red. A bullet hole punched through the fabric and the kevlar wrapping Nate had put on before setting out, and it would need to be looked at before they did any other big outings. 

Nate sighs in agreement. “I guess you’re right. It’s too cold to bring Dogmeat any further, and we won’t make it to Sanctuary with my leg and that rip in your side.” He hastily wraps his leg up and hefts his duffle and Deacon’s over his shoulder, despite Deacon reaching for it. “Let’s get out of here before scavengers come and start up some problems. That power suit won’t be any use to me with the chest caved in.”

They’re silent for the first hour of their trek up to Oberland Station. They were clear down close to the edge of the glowing sea, but even the heat from its radiation didn’t manage to melt the snow. Dogmeat scouted in front of them, letting out yips and barks into the darkness of the night to alert them to far off dangers only a dog’s senses could catch. Nate limped, and despite his efforts to take his pack back, Deacon let him. With the adrenaline wearing away, he was really starting to feel the burn from the bullet scrape in his side. The cold didn’t help.

The cold and his wound must be getting to him, because before he can really think about it, Deacon opens his mouth. “Your question. Earlier.”

Nate turns to him, his eyebrow raised. It’d been a rough couple of hours for them, but Deacon can’t get it out of his mind. “My question? You might have to remind me. I think a raider got a hit to my head earlier so I can’t remember.”

“On why I vouched for you when Dez had her weapons pointed at your head,” Deacon clarifies. He smiles when the foggy expression on Nate’s face clears. “Yeah. That question.”

“I think I kind of know why you did,” Nate says. “I mean, I kind of did carve my way through your ghoul security system to meet you guys. I was a little bit serious.”

“With good reason. Your kid’s still out there.” With the mention of Shaun, Nate’s face immediately gets dark. Deacon scrambles to cover up his slip. “I just wanted you to know that despite what I’ve see- what I’ve heard about you, all the crazy shit you pulled off with the Minutemen and all these settlements you’ve built up, that I think you’re a good addition to our merry little band. You’ve saved our skins, and mine, a lot - like, a  _ lot _ \- and that means something.”

Nate shrugs. “At first I just wanted Shaun back. But seeing what you guys do for synths…” He sighs, mulling over his words. Deacon doesn’t think he’s going to speak again, their boots crunching in the snow as they follow Dogmeat’s footprints, leaving their own in their wake. When the lights of Oberland Station’s beacon crest the horizon, Deacon settles into Nate’s answer, content in his own, because at least he could explain just a little bit of how he feels about Nate pulling the Railroad’s work out of the mud. 

“It means something,” Nate says, sometime later. They’ve shed their packs and layers, huddled together in a tiny room of Oberland Station’s addons that Nate had erected himself. A fire burns in the iron stove he and Nick had dragged out of a collapsed apartment building, creating a warmth in the room that adequately fights back the cold outside. He’s already cleaned and wrapped his wounds and Deacon’s, fingers gentle with a caring that only a man who has known worse could ever know. Deacon looks up from where he’s wrapping himself in his blankets to stare at Nate’s back as he settles onto his own mattress. 

“I guess it does,” Deacon says back. It’s quiet enough that he knows Nate doesn’t hear - although in all fairness, he’s sure Nate’s response wasn’t supposed to be heard either. He doesn’t know why there’s a sudden secrecy between the two of them: a yawning chasm that seems to get deeper with each breath Nate takes in his sleep. Deacon stays awake that night, staring at the back of Nate’s head, thinking about what line he could have possibly crossed. 

Maybe Nate didn’t really feel as strongly about the Railroad as he seemed. Maybe it was the offhanded way Deacon had brought up Shaun. He doesn’t know, and when Nate stirs in the morning, sunlight in his hair and his expression sleep-soft, he doesn’t think he’ll get an answer. They get ready for the day together, moving around each other as they change wound wrappings and get dressed. When they’re done, Nate whistles for Dogmeat to follow, and instead of calling one companion to him, he calls Deacon too, and they both step out into the crisp, cold, sunny morning together, their destination planned out ahead of their footsteps in the snow. 

 

+++


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure Codsworth saved as many pictures of his family as he could. Saved them all in a little safe and takes them out to look at them. Someone please give Codsworth a hug.

+++

 

A blizzard hits a week later. 

Dez calls it after twelve hours of constant wind and snow: all agents and tourists are to stay put and wait the storm out. She has Nate run the dead drop out early in the morning when it’s still dark, and even with his injured leg he makes it from HQ to the Goodneighbor drop and back quicker than Drummer Boy could at peak health. But when he gets back his limp is worse than it was on their trek from Oberland to HQ, and that walk took them the better part of a day and a half. He shrugs Carrington off, tells Dez the drop was made, and retreats to the back room where he and Deacon have shoved two beds in for some semblance of privacy, hobbling as he goes with Deacon and Dogmeat at his heels.

At least Tinker Tom gives them space. Deacon honestly doesn’t feel like telling the poor guy their one man army isn’t up to small talk. 

“Your leg’s worse,” Deacon says. He tries to make it sound off-hand, like it’s just an observation, but Nate caught his first lie about being the real leader of the Railroad, so he doesn’t continue the ruse when Nate gives him the  _ look _ over his shoulder. “Just sayin’, Boss. Be gentle.”

Nate drops his bag and kicks it under the bed he’s claimed as his. It’s across the room closest to the door, and while Deacon really wanted that bed for security purposes, he’s sleeping in the same room as the most dangerous man in the ‘Wealth, so he let it be. Deacon’s bed is behind a bookshelf full of some of Tom’s smaller projects, blocking his view of the door. Nate turns to look at him as he sheds his layers, his face unreadable. 

“Your concern is appreciated,” Nate says. His expression turns vaguely sour. It’s not a good look on him. 

Deacon plasters a big smile on his face. “I couldn’t be more concerned, pal. It’s not like we fought a building full of raiders a week ago and lived to tell the tale. My poor coat even lived through some gunshot wounds.”

Nate starts to unbuckle his pants and undo the button. Deacon would be uncomfortable if he hadn’t followed Nate from Vault 111 to Diamond City and everywhere in between for a solid three months before he stumbled upon the Railroad’s doorstep. Nate doesn’t seem concerned either as he drops his pants and long johns and starts to inspect the bandages wrapped around his leg. 

Dogmeat licks Nate’s fingers as he starts to unravel the soiled linen. He bats the dog’s nose away as he strips the bandages off his skin and sets it on a tray on the table next to his bed. Nate doesn’t grace Deacon with a response, so Deacon starts to take off his layers as well. The clock on Tinker Tom’s desk in the main room chimes one in the morning when Nate finally opens his mouth. 

“You lied to me when we met, didn’t you?”

Deacon’s jaw snaps shut, loud in the ensuing quiet between them. Nate yanks his long johns back up but leaves it at that, falling back to sit on his bed, staring at Deacon with a tired expression. He looks defeated, and if Deacon was a stronger man, he may have been able to resist it. 

But he’s not. The lie dies in his throat, and Deacon sighs. “What part did I lie about?”

Nate shrugs. He plays with one of the clasps on his Pipboy as he talks. “I talked to Dez, and she may or may not have told me a couple things. I just want the straight truth, Deacon,” he says. Nate’s expression turns from tired to truly, utterly helpless. The look of a man who just wants answers. “I have enough to deal with already.”

“You don’t trust me?”

Nate scowls. “That wasn’t the question.”

Well. He trusts Deacon enough with his life, but not his words? Deacon kicks off his boots and clasps his hands, noting that Nate does the same after he sets his Pipboy on the bedside table. Deacon stares him down, but Nate doesn’t make eye contact. It’s probably because of the sunglasses Deacon still hasn’t taken off. 

Deacon sighs and shakes his head. “You won’t like what I have to say,” he says. “I mean it.”

Nate looks up at him, eyes pleading. The lamplight bounces off the angles of his cheeks, his hair, the crow’s feet spidering out from the corners of his eyes. He’s handsome, the scars crawling up his chest and arms in no way marring his beauty. Codsworth had kept pictures of Nate and his wife from before the war - thick film prints that were dusty and somewhat faded, but the images were enough. Nate was young and happy once, his smile a million bucks with a twinkle in his eye that hasn’t really faded. He looked crisp in his wedding photos and dashing in home candids, pre-transition and post. His beauty was matched only by his wife’s, but even now, months later, Deacon still can’t bring himself to stare too long at the picture Nate keeps in the breast pocket of his jacket. 

It hits too close to home. He can imagine what Nate feels, but he doesn’t want to compare the two of them. He could never compare himself to Nate. 

Deacon swallows the lump in his throat. He could  _ never _ be like Nate. He lies too much. 

“The truth is,” Deacon begins, his heart ever sinking behind his ribs, “I’m a synth.”

Nate does a double take, and Deacon would have laughed if it didn’t hurt him so much to watch behind the safety of his sunglasses. At first is total disbelief, then anger, then understanding. They’re sitting in the middle of the ‘Wealth’s last defense for synths, after all. Nate has supported them basically since he took his first steps outside Vault 111; it’d be weird for him to turn on them now. But the look on his face is one of hurt and betrayal, like a friend who wasn’t trusted with information that they thought they could be trusted with. And that’s exactly what they are, but Deacon had lied through his teeth anyway, scraping up an answer that was designed to push away and teach at the same time, always from something close to home. 

Always a lie. Always his defense. He didn’t know how to be any different. 

“Are you serious?” Nate says, and it’s not with anger. It’s with understanding, like he’d been halfway expecting this answer, or like it really wouldn’t have mattered in the first place. Considering he regularly spent time with Nick without once questioning his synth nature, that was probably true. 

Deacon shrugs. “I mean, I went through the memory wipe thing we send other synths through. But it didn’t really work with me.” He taps his temple with his pointer finger. “I went through, but instead of giving me new memories, all of them were wiped. I woke up and didn’t know who I was or where I was. They had to tell me right there or risk insanity, I guess.”

Nate swallows thickly, his brow furrows. He almost looks  _ apologetic _ . “Deacon, I had no idea…”

“It’s not something you can fix, pal,” Deacon says. “It just is.”

His companion looks genuinely hurt now, like somehow he could have saved Deacon from his fabricated fate. He stands up and sits next to Deacon a comfortable distance away on his bed, their legs not quite touching but close enough to feel body heat. This close, they don’t make eye contact, and just to keep up the lie, Deacon leans over to his own bedside table and picks up the pencil there, scribbling on the piece of grubby paper set there on a clipboard. 

“Here,” Deacon says. He folds the paper up and hands it to Nate, but when Nate takes it, Deacon wraps his other hand around Nate’s, not letting him go. He frowns like his life depends on it. “My recall code. If something happens, or you’re in some serious,  _ serious _ shit because of me, use it. It’ll reset my head and I’ll remember what happened before my mind was wiped. I’ll tell you what you need to know about the Institute.”

Nate visibly blanches. “Deacon,” he says, voice wavering. He starts to pull his hand away. “I couldn’t take this - “

“Please,” Deacon pleads. “Take it.”

He lets Nate’s hand go, and already he can feel the lie settling in his stomach like a stone. Nate doesn’t move to open the piece of paper, his expression one of shock and understanding. He goes to take his hand away, but Deacon grips his wrist.

“Best not to read it until you need it. Can’t risk accidentally saying it if you already know it.”

“But if I know it I can avoid it,” Nate says, and pulls his wrist away. He opens the piece of paper while still looking at Deacon. “Deacon, this is your  _ life _ . I’d be wiping your memories away. I can’t do that to you, not when you’re finally opening up to me and - “

He stops, his eyes crawling over the paper, expression falling into something dangerously blank. Deacon watches as he reads it again and again, a muscle in his jaw twitching. But instead of an incredibly angry bout of yelling and screaming like Deacon expects, Nate folds the paper up and hands it back to Deacon, an odd upward tick at the corner of his mouth. 

“After all of that, huh?” Nate says. He doesn’t move from where he is next to Deacon’s side, his face blooming into a genuine smile. “You know, I was pissed earlier. When you were hurt and bleeding and you still weren’t being straight with me.”

Deacon’s throat clicks as he swallows. His heart is going a million miles a minute, like he just ran from one side of the Commonwealth to the other with a Deathclaw hot on his heels. “Yeah? Back at the raider base?”

Nate nods. “I was pissed because you were going to say something and then you corrected yourself. Something about watching me before we met. I was pissed that you weren’t being honest, but just now I figured out why.”

Deacon’s heart picks up speed again. “Yeah?” he repeats. He can’t help himself - Nate’s smile is too much. “And why’s that?”

“You act all tough, like some super spy out of a movie or comic book or something. But you’re scared too, of the Institute and what it’s already done to you. Switchboard fucked you up and you’re scared. You’re just trying to protect yourself and your family,” Nate says. His smile turns soft. Deacon feels heat climb up his neck. “I understand, you know. How you feel.”

At that, Nate stands and crawls into his own bed, wrapping the blankets around him like a cocoon. Deacon is still processing the massive changes in mood, from pissed to temperamental to understanding, the whiplash Nate made him suffer through leaving him in the metaphorical dust. Nate sets the alarm on his Pipboy for ten in the morning - enough sleep for the both of them, while still leaving some daylight to maybe hit a couple more dead drops for HQ if the weather permits - smiles at Deacon still gaping on the other side of the room, and then blows out the lantern on his bedside table. A quiet “goodnight” floats in the darkness, with Deacon’s response a mumbled afterthought into the dark. 

He doesn’t sleep that night. He lays awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling, sunglasses forgotten on the side of his bed as he mulls over Nate’s reaction. He’s tried the same trick on other Railroad newbies, and they either don’t care or have a more colorful reaction. But Nate was concerned over his safety more than anything else after his initial reaction, and that over everything else solidifies Deacon’s resolve:

Nate’s one of the good ones. He’s proven it time and again before, but he passed the test, even if it makes Deacon feel like shit for giving it. But that’s the price to pay for securing their cause in the long run against the Institute. 

“You can’t trust everyone indeed,” he says. Nate stirs in the bed across from him, mumbling in his sleep. “But you can trust me.”

 

+++


	4. Chapter 4

+++

 

“No,” Deacon says.

“Yeah,” Nate laughs. 

“Uhh, wait,” Deacon says, deadpan. He scrubs his face, under his sunglasses and around the edges of his wig. He shakes himself, straightens his sunglasses so they sit nicely on his nose, and then looks out in front of him again. “Yeah. No. I’m not doing that.”

Nate laughs, then snorts, a sound that would be ugly coming out of anyone else. It’s cute when Nate does it, though, a sad, small part of Deacon says. That part of him has become more vocal lately; he squashes it down for the time being as Nate reaches into his duffel and brings out one of the biggest rifle silencers Deacon has ever seen. 

“Look, no one will even notice this time,” Nate says. He hands the silencer over and Deacon takes it, hefting it in his hand. “There’s enough cover, and with my wounds healed it won’t be a problem. I can do it.”

Deacon inspects the silencer: it’s big, that’s for sure, designed for extremely large caliber rifles that don’t have the capability of stealth all by themselves. The muzzle break on the end of it is big too, but it’s only a quarter of the weight of the entire assembly. Deacon screws the stupid thing on the end of his rifle with an upturned nose. 

“‘This time,’” Deacon says. “You’re walking into another deathtrap hellbent on getting the only piece of power armor you can’t find, but wait - this time, your only plan is using me as a distraction.” Deacon snorts. “Real nice, boss. You know I’m used to the shadows, right? I’m a sniper, sure, but this is the exact opposite of what a sniper wants.”

Nate leans over and kisses his cheek. Deacon’s mind short-circuits - but as Nate gets up and hefts his gear, Deacon doesn’t get a chance to ask what the fuck that kiss was about. Instead he gets a wave goodbye, a happy “good luck”, and then Nate is bounding across the snow, Dogmeat at his heels, this whole setup too similar to their failure earlier in the month for Deacon to be comfortable. 

This time, though, Deacon is an active shooter. He kicks out the biped under his rifle and leans onto it, scoping down the nearest threats to Nate as he sneaks around the edges of the raider camp. 

Instead of a blocked-off, enclosed building, the raiders have erected a small, tented encampment right in the bend of a tiny creek, maybe only twelve of them total. It’s close to Sunshine Tidings, so Nate was going to take care of it anyway, but when they saw the power armor just sitting there out in the open, they had to take action. 

Well. Nate had to. Deacon would have been perfectly content with roaming the ‘Wealth looking for a different way through the Glowing Sea like any other self-respecting Railroad spy would have. But no, he got tied up with the most dangerous man he’s ever had the pleasure of stalking for three months before formally introducing himself. 

Good times. 

Deacon drops the first four perimeter guards in quick succession when Nate starts to make his move. The muzzle break slash silencer on his rifle does its job - the raiders, this late at night, are blearily checking their surroundings, lighting torches and picking up barely-bright flashlights to begin a headcount before sleeping. When they discover the bodies, their panic pops their heads into perfect view of Deacon’s scope. He takes down the ones closest to Nate before Nate reveals himself and mops up the ones trying to make a run for it. 

A small encampment indeed: in under five minutes they’re dead on the ground with barely enough time to find the ghost shooter killing them from the dark. Deacon packs up and scrambles down the hill he’d been scoping from, the hike to the raider encampment a short jaunt despite the snow making him slow. 

“Just a moving crew,” Nate shouts when Deacon gets within close earshot. He sees Nate wave around a sheaf of papers, then hands them over to Deacon when he gets to his side. “They’d been hoofing it from Dunwich when they found the frame in an old military checkpoint. Figures they’d take it when they didn’t know what they were messing with - could barely get it started.”

Deacon snorts as he shifts through the papers. Shitty handwriting and even shittier people writing it - he shoves the papers in his pack to look at later, only sparing enough time to fold them in half before he zips up his bag. Dogmeat is circling the camp, huffing in the dark, his breath white-yellow in the cold from the torches the raiders had dropped when Deacon and Nate were shooting them down. Nate does a last sweep of the camp, checking tents and sleeping bags, before meeting back up with Deacon, who just stands there, rubbing his hands together and breathing onto them. 

“Done?” Deacon says. Nate nods, his hair catching the light of a nearby fire. He needs a bath, Deacon notes idly. “Good. Grab your stupid armor and let’s get out of here. I don’t plan on being the world’s second human popsicle to wander the ‘Wealth.”

“Har har,” Nate says, not a note of inflection in his tone. Deacon snorts and leaves him to it, swinging his rifle around and taking off the monster of a silencer still hanging off the barrel. Nate starts to strip the power armor for parts, starting with the chest plate and its innards, his screwdriver and pliers loud in the quiet of the night. Deacon makes his own circuit of the raider camp, kicking bodies over and rifling through their pockets for anything useful. By the time he makes it back to Nate, he’s accumulated a good amount of caps and ammunition, some of it for weapons they don’t even carry but are worth a shiny penny back in Diamond City. 

Nate yanks out a piece of circuitry, tossing it over his shoulder into the pile slowly growing at his feet. Deacon watches him strip the poor thing of everything the raiders had attached to it until it’s down to it’s barest functional frame - not like it was much anyway when they found it, but Nate had just stripped it to something that didn’t look like it could even walk in as little as fifteen minutes. He doesn’t seem to think anything of it as he drops his tools into his bag and clambers inside the suit; the stupid thing starts on the first try, and before Deacon can really think about it, Nate is hauling both their bags over his armored shoulder and starting out of the camp.

“So quickly?” Deacon huffs, jogging behind Nate as he trudges up the hill towards Sanctuary. Dogmeat barks somewhere to Deacon’s right to let them know where he is more than anything. Deacon snaps his fingers to bring Dogmeat to his side. “You just gutted this thing of anything useful.”

“I just need the working chest armor and scanner housed in it,” Nate says. His voice comes out muffled; the helmet’s microphone must be busted. “They had already stripped it of everything else. I just tore out stuff they tacked on to keep the nonessential systems running.”

“Like the microphone?”

Nate laughs. “Yeah. Like that.”

A not-so-comfortable silence settles over them. Deacon is still thinking about that stupid kiss Nate gave him - it wasn’t a kiss to the mouth, but he’s never seen Nate do that to anyone else, especially someone of the feminine persuasion. He thinks maybe Nate is just fucking with him, maybe as payback for all the times Deacon has (and does) mess with him, but he can’t think of a time when Nate had ever intentionally did that to someone. Nick, maybe, and probably Piper, but their banter is more just friendly ribbing and nothing else. Nothing like leading someone on with some looks and a kiss to the cheek. 

It bugs the shit out of him all the way to Sanctuary. Nate squeezes out of the power armor once he’s walked it to his little workshop in the middle of the settlement, and because it’s so late, he deigns just to leave it for the next day, ushering Deacon out to the community sleeping house across the street. Nate doesn’t seem to notice Deacon’s itchy mood even as Deacon kicks his duffel under his bed and doesn’t shed his layers despite the heat rising in their shared room: he just collapses in bed, facing Nate but not looking at him directly, using his sunglasses as a shield as Nate methodically undresses. 

It’s stupid, to be this pissed. But there’s a small part of him that’s wanted to start something between them, no matter how miniscule the start would be. They both live incredibly dangerous lives, and he’s not quite sure Nate has gotten over his wife - if that’s even  _ possible _ . He doesn’t want to take her place, either. That’s not fair to him, to her, and especially to Nate.

_ God, _ he thinks to himself.  _ Could you get any more pathetic? _

“Want some dinner?” Nate says, somewhere from his right. 

Deacon startles, but he hides it quickly as he sits up. He must have snoozed for a couple minutes while Nate had shuffled around the small room, unloading their duffle bags of the things they could stash here at Sanctuary before having to move out the next day. Deacon scrubs his face as Nate holds out a plate of Mirelurk steaks, salted and seared over the fire just outside the building.

“Aw, you shouldn’t have,” Deacon says. Nate huffs, a small smile cracking over his tired features. Deacon takes the plate despite feeling like a piece of shit for acting like a brat. 

“Just make sure you eat it all,” Nate says. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you eat.”

Deacon snorts. “Don’t worry, I’ll get nice and fat for you.”

“Ew,” Nate says. A laugh bubbles up out of his chest, quiet and unsure. It makes Deacon smile, his bad mood melting away. 

“There’s that smile,” Nate says, quieter. Deacon glances at him from behind his glasses, feeling heat climb up his neck. Nate looks away from him - in embarrassment or something else, Deacon isn’t sure - but Deacon can see a slight redness on Nate’s cheeks, however muted it is because of his darker skin. 

Deacon watches as he steps away to his own bed and begins to get undressed. He doesn’t know if it’s a bad habit or if he’s just doing it in front of Deacon to screw with him, but Nate doesn’t seem to notice, or care, that Deacon is watching him as he gets ready for bed. He always starts with his jacket, shrugging the heavy leather off his shoulders and hanging it gingerly on whatever bedpost or chair he can find. The rest of his clothes follow in a similar fashion, with those he needs to wash by the river in the morning being set on the floor, and the rest that he can stand wearing another day or two being folded neatly into a pile on top of his duffel. Only his undershirt and briefs remain, but Deacon doesn’t get a long look before Nate is burrowing under the thick wool blankets, miles of dark, scarred skin disappearing in moments. 

Deacon means to let it go. A part of him wants to book it, to gather his shit and run for the hills, melt into the shadows,  _ anything  _ to get away from this man that drives him crazy. At first, Nate was just a simple target, a pet project he kept from Dez because he didn’t want her to boot him to the curb for not pouring his heart and soul into the Railroad’s golden mission. He believed in it, sure, and when Nate was asleep he still crept away, whispered to the dark, slipped notes and coded letters into dead drops for those to come and pick up after him later. But now that he was following the ‘Wealth’s most dangerous man, he was loathe to abandon him now, even though his body screamed for him to tear a trail back to Diamond City and change his face, his voice, everything about him until Nate never had a chance of recognizing him. 

It still beat inside him, close to his heart, a tattoo of fear and dread. The shadow of Switchboard hung over him like a guillotine, a weight he had to carry because everyone else seemed too focused on forgetting. But he couldn’t, not when he could still hear the choreographed march of the gen 1 synths tearing through the tunnels, their weapons silent but the screams of the dead louder than any gunshot could ever be. He’d barely escaped with his cover intact - Dez, Carrington, and Tom hadn’t been heard from or seen until days later, when Deacon and Glory had been hoofing it to Goodneighbor to regroup. Their wounds were deep and the blood had ran almost nonstop, but still they were here, despite it all, and Deacon couldn’t forget, not ever. 

Switchboard made him wary, even now. He didn’t shed layers to sleep like Nate did - he simply kicked off his boots and curled up in bed, his sunglasses still pressed to his face even as he turned his back to Nate. He couldn’t drop this one piece of him, this one last form of protection, even in the dark of the night, even with his most trusted friend at his back, because even Nate didn’t know who he truly was yet. He liked to think he did, but then Nate would shoot him an odd look, his speech would falter, his hand would stop just an inch short from patting Deacon on the back, and Deacon would feel it like a void between them, screeching and deathly quiet every time. 

He wanted to believe he could love again. He wanted to believe some small, young, hopeful part of him still existed. When he hiked back to Sanctuary in the morning after securing a drop in Concord and saw Nate still snoring away, the blankets tucked up to his chin, he started to think maybe that part of him could still live on. 

Nate was quiet when he woke and started his day. Deacon brought him breakfast - some weird concoction of radstag and mirelurk egg that smelled funny but tasted fine if he didn’t think too much - and Nate ate it gratefully, his smile small yet bright, Deacon’s sun on this foggy, cold morning. They don’t say a word to each other even when Nate marches right past his bare-bones power armor he scored the previous night and starts hiking up past Sanctuary, towards the entrance to Vault 111, towards where his world began and Deacon’s began to end. 

When they crest the rise and the Vault’s elevator house is visible not too far away, Deacon clears his throat. Nate throws a smile over his shoulder but doesn’t say anything - Deacon follows in his footsteps in the snow, sticking his feet in the holes Nate’s boots leave behind him, worry bubbling up under his diaphragm, his gaze flickering between Nate and the spot in the hills where Deacon had set up his observing station the years leading up to Nate’s unfortunate rebirth into the world he used to call home.

Maybe Nate wanted to bring him into the Vault. Maybe he wanted to point at that spot in the trees, look back at him and say “You know that wooden shamble up there? I knew you were hiding up there, watching me, now spill it.” All of Deacon’s work would be for naught; the months of stalking Nate up and down the wastes, bribing Dogmeat with treats so he wouldn’t bark every time Deacon got too close, following Nate into every backwoods settlement disguised as some caravanner, mercenary, farmer, you name it - it was all going to end now, up here on this icy bluff, as gentle and kind as Nate could say, “I don’t need you anymore, I can’t stand being around a liar and a cheat.” 

But then they came to a stop at the edge of the cliff, standing with the Vault entrance to their backs and Sanctuary sprawling out in front of them, down a drop steep and long enough to kill either of them if they slipped. Diamond City glittered beyond in the misty morning, a blurry yellow glow reflecting back through the gentle snowfall beginning to sting Deacon’s cheeks. 

Nate sucks in a breath beside him, drawing Deacon’s nervous gaze to the side of his face as he continues to look out across the ‘Wealth. He digs in his pocket and pulls out something small and glittering, something Deacon doesn’t catch with how quickly he palms it in his gloved hands. He steps away from the ledge and turns to Deacon, sticking out his fist without saying anything, his stare fixed on his boots even as Deacon reaches to unclench Nate’s fingers from his palm. 

“I want you to have it,” Nate says finally, after a long moment of Deacon just standing there with Nate’s small gift sitting in his upturned hand. “I know you’re upset with me. I don’t know what I did, but I have to go through the Glowing Sea to find Virgil and I don’t want to leave things as they are between us, so…” Nate shrugs. “Take care of it for me?”

Deacon pulls off his gloves so he can touch the ring with his bare fingers. The metal is warm against his skin despite the cold, and when he turns it over against his palm he catches an inscription along the inner face, small and loopy cursive catching a ray of sunlight as it peeks through the clouds. His throat constricts as he reads it -  _ Forever Yours, Nate  _ \- and despite how saccharine it is, his heart breaks, realization dawning on him as Nate turns away, scrubbing his face with his hands to hide the tears Deacon only barely catches before they disappear. 

It was Nora’s ring. Some two-hundred odd years ago, once upon a time, Nate and Nora stood at an altar and exchanged rings and vows. He’s seen pictures Codsworth had hoarded away, but here with the weight of that true reality sitting in his hand, he doesn’t think he can breathe. He shakily shoves the ring into his pocket, heavy now with the burden Nate still carries, humbled that Nate would trust him with this even after everything Deacon has done. 

He wants to confess everything now: lay his heart bare, shed his layers and personas until there’s nothing left of him but the raw, painful truth he’s been running from since he took on the name Deacon. Nate has been nothing but genuine, it would be only fair of him to do the same, but then his throat constricts and his body seizes, and the look on Nate’s face drops from hopeful to politely disappointed in a matter of seconds of Deacon meeting his eyes. 

Nate nods then. His jaw sets, resolute, his body shrinking under Deacon’s gaze, unsure of what to do. He steps to the side, intending to walk past him and back down the hill towards Sanctuary, but before Deacon can stop himself his hand shoots out and grabs Nate’s wrist as he passes, his skin warm against Deacon’s, a hot, quick pulse beating against the thin skin there. 

“Switchboard,” Deacon croaks. Nate freezes - their eyes meet, and Deacon swears Nate can see right into his soul. “Months ago. Before I met you.”

“You mean before we officially met?”

Deacon swallows and nods. “Yeah. I’d been following you for a while, trying to see if you had been worth all those years watching the Vault.” He nods his head towards the Vault’s entrance behind them, but Nate’s face is already clearing, understanding smoothing the near-permanent wrinkle between his brows. “You’d practically been my life even before now, but while you’d been waltzing around, wiping out raiders and helping out the Minutemen, Switchboard happened. A lot of us got killed, and I -”

His voice cracks, and no matter how hard he clears his throat, he can’t speak again. Nate’s hand turns against his own, his palm warm against Deacon’s skin - only then had he realized how big his hands were, all rough calluses and blunt fingernails, a comfort he never realized he missed. Something passes between them, an understanding that went beyond words, an electric current zipping between their pressed palms. Deacon nods, and Nate nods back, relief washing over him even as they step apart and start back down for Sanctuary again. 

Nate leaves the next morning, before the sun rises. He doesn’t take Deacon or Dogmeat - too risky with only one working power armor rig, with not nearly enough radaway between them to cover the effects of a storm as massive as the Glowing Sea. Deacon accepts it as it is, waves as Nate steps off in his bulky armor with Nick trailing behind him, and settles back into the world of running drops for Dez, his time no longer occupied by a man that’s taken up residence in his guarded, broken heart.

 

+++


	5. Chapter 5

+++

Three weeks. He’s not sure which of the two of them had suffered worse. 

Deacon didn’t stick around Sanctuary took long after Nate left. Long enough to clear up some routes with Preston so he didn’t overlap too much with the Minutemen and be too recognizable by his men, but short enough that Piper couldn’t nail him down for more questions. He took off for HQ, ran drops for Drummer Boy as cover, then dropped below radar again, scanning Vaults and sticking to old routes along the Freedom Trail to confirm no new Courser sightings. He’d ditched the wig again sometime between Concord and Diamond City, danced between changing his face or not, and decided against it once High Rise had recruited his help again after a new batch of escaped synths appeared off the northern coast, too far to make it to Bunker Hill on their own. 

Nate, however, didn’t fare as well. He’d dumped the power armor somewhere along the highway after stumbling out of the Glowing Sea the second time: he and Nick had to hike in and out more than once just to get what Virgil wanted so he could worm his way into the Institute. They’d done it purely for the information, and by the time Nate had stumbled back up north, battered and bleeding, he was poorer for it. 

But he didn’t act that way. When he stumbled into HQ, Nick holding him up his radiation sickness was so bad, he was grinning. It was the most beautiful thing Deacon had ever seen. 

“Underground,” Deacon deadpans, and despite the pain, Nate laughs. Carrington shoots them a glare across the room that Deacon pointedly ignores. He stomps out of the room after injecting Nate with another dose of radaway, leaving them alone in the relative silence of the medbay. Tinker Tom is still ranting about the Courser chip in the other room, Dez and Glory trying to shush him because of the early hour. It doesn’t seem to deter him. 

Nate shifts to his side, curling under the thin blanket he’s tugged up to his chin, facing Deacon. “Yeah. No wonder you guys couldn’t ever find an entrance before - even if you combed the old campus dozens of times, you wouldn’t find anything now. They’ve probably caved it in and bricked it over so no one could get down without their fancy teleporter.”

_ Teleporter _ . How the Institute had that kind of technology, Deacon desperately wanted to know. Their gen 3 synths were a marvel of science on their own, but copying someone’s entire essence, down to their thoughts and emotions, and transporting it somewhere else without them physically travelling that distance was almost unreal. It was how their escaped synths kept cropping up in places that seemed unreachable by any other means, at least in terms of the distance between them and wherever they had escaped from - they’d gone as far as the Capitol, and Deacon could attest to the sleepless nights they’d all spent scratching their heads, wondering just where the hell the Institute could be if their escaped synths were hundreds of miles away from where the activity seemed the densest. 

The puzzle seemed complete, however. Nate was happy with the answer and despite how injured he was, he was eager to get working on the plans Virgil had given him for their own, crude teleporter. Deacon was disappointed - and a little angry, if he was honest with himself - that Nate had taken on a Courser without him by his side, but Nick had a strength to him that was beyond human, so Deacon couldn’t fault him that much. But seeing Nate here, bandaged and bruised and still green around the gills from radiation sickness only fueled him on. 

Never again. Next time, he was going to stalk Nate to the ends of the Earth if he had to. 

“Deacon,” Nate says. Deacon catches his gaze as it snaps back to him, startled out of his thoughts. Nate’s smile turns soft. “Something on your mind?”

Three weeks. That was all - not even a full month apart and Deacon’s heart was aching. He’d been with men before, been close to marrying one once, but ever since Barbara he’d kept himself distant even from close friendships. Glory was the closest he’d ever been to having a friend in years, but she was jagged edges where his were fluid and shifting, buckling against other personalities and absorbing them where he could, saving them for future use. 

Nate was different. It sounded stupid after he said it in his head, but he was. He remembered the first trek Nate had taken outside Sanctuary - sent out on a quest for Codsworth to find help in Concord - his first tango with the ‘Wealth’s wildlife at that Red Rocket just outside his old neighbourhood. He’d gunned down the molerats surrounding Dogmeat, but instead of sending the dog away or ignoring him or putting him out of his misery from his wounds, he’d wrapped up the worst of them and used one of the two stimpacks he’d managed to scrounge up on an animal he wasn’t sure wouldn’t bite him for his trouble. Deacon had been floored by it back then, rooted to the spot, hidden behind trees and bushes, his rifle heavy in his hands. No one in Deacon’s long, long years, had someone done something as simple and kind-hearted given worse circumstances. 

Nate was different. A man of integrity, of honor. He cared for those around him with a fierceness Deacon had never seen before then, and it only took Nate practically forcing it on him for Deacon to realize he cared for him, too. 

“Something is always on my mind,” Deacon says. Nate snorts, a weak puff of air more than anything, but it makes Deacon smile all the same. Nora’s ring is a ball of iron in his pocket. “Always something about you.”

Carrington interrupts them then, clattering into the room with a shot he says will help Nate sleep through the rest of the night. Nate protests against it, his cheeks blotchy red from Deacon’s words, but Deacon shakes his head when their eyes meet again. Nate sits still after that to allow Carrington to administer the shot, but his stare is hot with betrayal and something else, not all of it a playful ruse to make Deacon feel bad for him. 

Nate drops off into sleep after that. One moment he’s shifting to better glare Deacon down, the next his head is lolling against the pillow, rolling to one side, every muscle in his body relaxing at once. Deacon pulls off his wig and scratches at his hair once Nate’s breathing starts to even out - he thinks about putting it back on before heading out, then decides against it, and starts picking out bobby pins from his hair. He stores them in Nate’s pack for better use and tosses his wig into his own pack, one layer of defense between the two of them dropped, his heart beating heavy against his ribs because of it. 

“You’re getting comfortable,” Dez says when he emerges from the medbay. Tinker Tom has retreated to his corner of the crypt, quiet despite his earlier commotion over the chip, his face a mask of concentration as he types furiously at his terminal. Carrington is nowhere to be found, and neither is Glory - Deacon is grateful even as some of the other agents who are still awake shoot him odd looks. Not many have seen him without the wig (or with hair at all), but Deacon ignores them. 

Deacon shrugs when he reaches Dez’s side. She smiles at him and runs a motherly hand through his hair, straightening it and pushing it out of his face. Her touch is gentle, reminiscent of a time when he didn’t have to hide so much of who he is, but the thought passes as quickly as it enters his mind. 

He’s not the same person he was before Switchboard. He’s not the same person he was three weeks ago. Right now, he’s the closest he’s ever been to who he truly is, and it was all thanks to Nate, snoozing away in the other room. 

“Just be careful,” Dez continues. She drops her hand and lights a cigarette, taking a drag and blowing the smoke away from him. “He may have gotten us a good couple steps closer to the Institute, but you can’t give up your cover just yet. I still need you in the field.”

He nods. “Yeah, I know. But this is the only way I think I can show him I trust him.”

Trust. Nate had already turned his hand, exposed himself to Deacon in a gesture that still made Deacon the most uncomfortable he’s ever been. His wife’s ring - a small thing, platinum with three small diamonds placed equally distant from each other around it - was valuable in its own right, something expensive even before the bombs fell. The fact that Nate handed it over to someone who had a track record of disappearing at the drop of a hat took a lot of trust on Nate’s part. Trust that Deacon was starting to think he was ready to reciprocate. 

Starting with the wig. And when Nate wakes in the morning, when the shock of Deacon’s absent wig has worn off after the couple minutes it takes Nate to notice, he continues by taking off the sunglasses. 

 

+++


	6. Chapter 6

+++

 

The moment they met Bobbi No-Nose, Deacon knew they were in for it.

Nate just couldn't help helping people. He saw a woman in need - even a wrinkly old ghoul from Goodneighbor - and just  _ had  _ to help her. Maybe it was her bloodshot eyes, or her gravelly voice, or her raisin-like complexion; all Deacon knew was it was one more mystery of Nate’s to unravel.

A mystery, apparently, that Nate intended on tangling further. Deacon needed a new hobby. Or a new existence.

“Sure this is okay, boss?”

Nate shoots him a less than sure look. Deacon winces behind his sunglasses.

“No?” Nate says, his voice hitching up at the end, an unsure question. Dogmeat huffs beside them; even the  _ dog _ is tired of it, Deacon thinks. “Look, guys,” Nate defends, “if this goes sideways at least we can handle it. A little digging can’t be  _ that  _ horrible.”

“Besides the part where our illustrious mastermind wants us to break her weird buddy out of jail?” Deacon rounds the corner behind Nate, keeping close to the other man’s back as he speaks. Even in the warmer alleys of Diamond City, his breath puffs out in white clouds. The cold seeps into his coat and the seam between his gloves and sleeves, and already the morning chill is beginning to freeze his toes. He’s about to complain about Nate’s lack of foresight - it’s early and they’re about to dig  _ underground -  _ but Nate shakes his head at the apparent doubt on his face. Deacon rolls his eyes and crosses his arms.

The fight deflates inside him when Nate turns to him. He should’ve known Nate would have foreseen this. He always does.

“Just be careful,” Deacon warns. “The last thing we need is more attention.”

Nate gives him a thumbs up and a winning smile, the doubt washing away with his deflection. “Don’t worry. No one can resist my charm.”

Deacon snorts. Nate wanders off towards the security office - Deacon can’t enter on account of too many guards recognizing him lately - presumably to either charm himself into or the guards out of their pants. Deacon hopes to whoever’s listening that the poor guy on duty has half a mind to keep it together when Nate flashes his most charming smile.

He loiters outside the noodle shop in the meantime, careful to keep his wig straight when he pulls his hood up against the chill. Snow begins to stick to people’s shoulders and in the gutters, touching whatever slivers of skin exposed to the weather. Christmas is getting near - Halloween came and went pretty quickly, with the haphazard decorations coming down as quickly as they went up, people eager to decorate their wilting, sad little trees. The lights always make Diamond City look a little less grimy though, a feeling that seems to permeate everything and everyone; it’s a feeling Deacon likes, with kids giving and receiving gifts and the adults a little less depressed with each year that passes. 

Bobbi, however, seems less enchanted with the atmosphere. 

“Your boy better know what he’s doing,” she grits out. 

Deacon has to fight the angry smile off his face.  _ His boy _ . If he’s that obvious, maybe a face change wouldn’t be such a bad idea. 

“He’s more capable than he looks,” he says instead. No point in picking a big fight with someone he’s going to spend an inordinate amount of time underground with. “More than  _ your boy _ in jail.”

“Yeah? Quite a mouth, kid.”

She sounds pleased at his chagrin; he doesn’t let her get the benefit of anything else out of him. She seems satisfied and pushes away from the bar, swinging off her stool to carefully wander closer to the stairs leading out of Diamond City. He lets her, turning down Takahashi’s offer for noodles as politely as he can when he sees Nate not-so-inconspicuously slip out of the security office. Dogmeat huffs a low bark as a shorter, jittery-looking man follows after him, his stare flitting from one dark corner of the alleys around them to the next. 

He doesn’t notice Deacon coming up to their side, and the look on his face is so priceless Deacon can’t keep the stupid grin off his face. He jumps, his shaking hands coming up to wring through his curly red hair; Nate, for what it’s worth, just shakes his head, letting Dogmeat curl around his leg and bump his nose into his palm. 

“Mel,” Nate starts, patting Dogmeat on his muzzle, “this is Deacon. Deacon, Mel.”

Mel fidgets, not quite meeting either of their stares. “Uh, you think we should go meet Bobbi?”

Deacon motions with his head. “She left. In a hurry?”

“No,” Mel says, defensive. He seems to shrink in on himself as he speaks. “Just - should probably wait to discuss details until we meet back up with her.”

Deacon and Nate share a look - they both know this will likely end sideways. Or worse. But Nate holds his arm out, allowing Mel to lead the way, and smartly keeps his mouth shut the forty minute walk to Goodneighbor. Mel heads straight for Bobbi’s while Nate hangs back, feigning buying something from Daisy. 

“Either of them make a move, you drop them,” Nate says lowly. Deacon raises a brow in question, and Nate shakes his head in answer. “Don’t kill them. Just in the leg or foot. We aren’t here to make enemies.”

Deacon nods. He doesn’t like the idea of tunneling under Diamond City and stealing from the mayor (even with what he knows about him), but Bobbi doesn’t seem like the person to accept constructive criticism. Deacon tips his head for Nate to go first, and follows him and Dogmeat to Bobbi’s house and down into her basement. Nate tightens Dogmeat’s vest before they venture further down; Deacon pretends not to see the folded slip of paper he stuffs into one of the pockets and the quiet command for Dogmeat to turn back and find help if anything bad happens. 

After Nate stands, they descend, and despite the lack of wind, Deacon feels the chill of the caverns around them bite into his bones.

Bobbi’s voice floats up to them when they climb into the tunnel network proper. Dogmeat’s ears prick forward, but as the three of them move further down the crumbling stairs, he doesn’t move past Nate’s side. As they get closer, Deacon starts to recognize words - and another voice.

“Where did you even find this guy, anyway?” Mel says, disbelieving. 

Bobbi snorts out a laugh. Deacon’s hand snaps forward and grabs Nate’s belt, pulling him back. Nate halts, turning a questioning look on him, but Deacon just shakes his head. Bobbi’s voice picks up again and Nate’s expression clears in understanding. They stand still, eavesdropping around the corner of the next flight of stairs. 

“He just waltzed up to my door,” Bobbi says. “Naive and stupid as can be. His buddy is less trusting, but I betcha we can count on both of them being here.”

“The one in sunglasses? He isn’t much to look at. The other one, though…”

Bobbi laughs again. “Hush, Mel. It’s just a job.”

“What’s a job without some fun?”

Deacon feels hot anger jump up his throat. Nate sighs in front of him and loudly jostles down the stairs, making sure his boots clap against the cement to announce their arrival. Deacon follows after him silently, Dogmeat on his heels. Bobbi and Mel smartly shut their mouths as soon as the noise starts up.

“About time,” Bobbi says. She has a grin on her face Deacon doesn’t like - Mel is not so discreetly looking Nate up and down, something he doesn’t like even more. 

Nate seems to dislike it as well. “We ready?” he says shortly. 

Mel drags his slimy stare off Nate long enough to motion to the hovering eyebot several feet behind him. “Just tell Sonya what to do. She’s got modified sonic emitters that’ll cut through loose soil like butter. We’ll be in McDonough’s secret stash in no ti- “

“Great, thanks for the science lesson,” Deacon interrupts. Mel shoots him a dirty look. Deacon glares back, satisfied that it seems to have an effect even behind the glasses. He grins. “Got a problem?”

Bobbi sighs, waving her hand between them. “Boys. Let’s just dig.”

Nate rolls his shoulder in annoyance and steps away from the group. He searches the perimeter of the room while Deacon digs in the toolboxes of the previous miners. The sonic boom of Sonya’s emitters make him jump when Nate finds a weak wall - when he passes by Mel on the way into the newly excavated room, Mel has a smug look on his face. 

“Don’t get your pants all tight just yet,” Deacon purrs, matching his smile. “The position of dashing redhead is already occupied.”

Mel sputters. He doesn’t get a chance to reply when Nate’s voice calls from the other end of the dark room, beckoning for Sonya. Mel rushes forward with his bot, eager to please, oblivious to the begging look Nate throws at Deacon when they meet up again in the next room. Deacon smiles his best disarming smile, and follows after him deeper into the earth. 

 

+++

 

“Do you like baseball?”

Nate grunts as he yanks his blade out of the skull of a ghoul. It comes away from the poor bastard’s brain with a disgusting shucking sound; he flicks the blood and grey matter away with his expression carefully blank.

“Do you know what baseball is?” Nate shoots back. Mel doesn’t seem to catch the irritated note to Nate’s tone - his grin is proud, and it makes Deacon’s skin crawl. 

“Yeah, actually, I do. I found a couple books in the library near here that explained it. Well, not near  _ here _ , exactly, since we’re a couple dozen feet of dirt and concrete from the surface, but - “

“Do you know what subtlety is?” Deacon interjects. Mel is taken aback, his sentence cut short before it started into a nonsensical rant. Deacon grins as darkly as he can when Mel turns his confused expression to him. 

“Huh?” Mel says elegantly.

Nate shoves Deacon’s shoulder, a quiet  _ stop it _ rumbled under his breath, but Deacon keeps going. 

“You know, subtlety? Like, putting a sock on the door? In your mouth? Knowing when someone is so blatantly trying to keep you at a distance and you keep fu-”

“Deacon,” Nate warns. Mel glances between the two of them with something  _ almost _ resembling recognition on his face, but not quite getting there. Deacon shrugs one shoulder, mumbles an “Okay, Boss,” and turns down the next hallway that hasn’t collapsed from the weight of the street above them. 

A beat passes before Mel launches back into his monologue, the tail end of it breaking into random facts and boring exposition on the evolution of baseball from the beginning of the war until now. Deacon really doesn’t know how a maladjusted introvert like Mel ended up learning so much about a pre-war sport, and he doesn’t know how Nate keeps from turning around and strangling him as he chatters on. Some part of Deacon realizes this must be how Nate felt at the beginning of their acquaintance when Deacon wouldn’t shut the fuck up, but squashes that thought as quickly as it begins. 

Bobbi, however, thinks the entire shitshow is hilarious, and trudges along ahead of them with Dogmeat behind her, her grin as satisfied as it can be on her wrinkly old face. Deacon decides he hates it, and grits his teeth until the sweet release of the next gunfight starts up again, his thoughts blissfully blank as his body settles back into the rote repetition of dancing away from grabby feral ghouls and disgustingly large radroaches. 

 

+++

  
  


“You didn’t have to cover us like that.”

Nate sighs. Deacon turns his chin with his finger to better wrap his forehead in gauze, turning the older man’s line of sight away from Mel and Bobbi a couple feet away. Nate speaks anyway, his tone tired.

“What would be the point in turning Hancock against you?” Nate asks flatly. “I don’t want to walk around with that on my conscious.”

Bobbi and Mel are silent. Deacon finishes wrapping Nate’s head in gauze, fighting down a smart remark on how he looks like a ninja. Nate seems to read his mind and gives him a thankful grin. He stands and makes an aborted move towards Deacon’s face with his hand, deciding midway to grip Deacon’s forearm instead. The loss is like a pit in Deacon’s stomach even as is heart flutters at the contact Nate gives him.

Mel, however attracted he is to Nate, withers under Nate’s stare. Deacon would feel bad for him if he wasn’t so angry that he and Bobbi were the reason Nate was hurt in the first place.

Nate scratches his scalp, sighing. “Look, just -“ He shakes his head. “Just go home. Don’t make me regret covering for you.”

Bobbi nods enthusiastically. She elbows Mel then turns on her heel, marching down the snow-encrusted road back towards Goodneighbor. Mel doesn’t follow her, however; he stays where he is, staring at his boots like they hold the questions to his answers.

“Can I say something?” he says, interrupting whatever Nate was going to say. Nate nods. Mel swallows audibly and seems to force himself to keep eye contact with Nate. It seems to give him courage, and he continues.

“Would you like to go out sometime?” Mel asks meekly. “At Diamond City’s bar maybe?”

Deacon has to fight down a half-surprised, half-angry laugh. Nate tenses next to him, then turns and stares at Deacon, his gaze far away even as Deacon stares back, his jaw aching with how hard he has to keep himself from grinning.

Nate turns back to Mel, but already Mel understands his answer. He nods, gives a two-fingered salute, and turns to follow after Bobbi’s footsteps in the snow. Deacon waits until he disappears into the fog starting to roll in from the sea to speak.

“Nora must have had to beat you over the head with her marriage proposal, huh?” Deacon deadpans. 

His remark gets the desired effect -  Nate chokes on a snort, surprise startling him into laughing more than what Deacon says. He slaps Deacon’s shoulder and Deacon shoves him back, careful of his bruises but still aiming to topple him into the snow. Hours of fighting ghouls and radroaches still doesn’t stop them from wrestling each other when Deacon finally gets his companion into the fresh powder starting to fall through the fog.

“Listen, you little  _ smartass,”  _ Nate grits out, his arm around Deacon’s ribs while his other hand tries to wrest his right arm behind his back. Deacon wriggles away, scrambling against the cold snow, careful not to elbow Nate in the face.

“He wanted in your pants so badly,” Deacon pants, a laugh starting midway in his chest. “He was ready to drop to his knees and -“

Nate lunges for him and they both tumble into a drift. Deacon feels his glasses smash against the cold wetness of the snow, then feels them pull away from his face when he and Nate roll away. He tries desperately to cover his face, panic boiling up against his teeth, his heart beginning to pound in his ears, but he’s not quick enough. 

“Oh,” Nate says eloquently, out of breath. Deacon scrambles in the snow for his glasses and jams them on his face. Nate is staring at him when he turns back around.

Except now he doesn’t have anything to say. Words come so easily to him and now they’ve fled him along the beat of his thundering heart, beating a rhythm against his ribs that’s grown too familiar. Nate reaches for him, and this time instead of thinking better of it, he touches Deacon’s cheek, his bare fingertips cold against Deacon’s skin.

“I see why you cover them,” Nate says quietly. A warm tenderness graces his features, kind and nonthreatening. “I’m sorry for knocking them off your face.” 

Deacon can’t speak. He nods jerkily and stands, brushing snow from his clothes. Even as shady as Mel is, at least he didn’t hide his interest in Nate from shame - a far shot from Deacon. But Nate shot down Mel at every smart comment, shied away from his casual touches and not so politely told him to keep his greasy grin turned elsewhere. Mel had been disgusting, sure, but at least he wasn’t -

“Knock it off.”

Nate raises a brow when Deacon turns to brush everything off with a grin. He sounds as unimpressed as he looks - his tone fills Deacon with a guilt he doesn’t understand.

“I know how angry Mel made you. Makes you,” Nate amends at Deacon’s snort. “But there’s nothing to be angry about. He’s gone - this stupid trek through the sewers is over.”

“You realize he would have jumped you, right?” Deacon says. Something like anger roils under his skin, hot and bitter. It takes him a moment to reign it in so he doesn’t direct it at Nate. “Like if I wasn’t here, he would’ve had you against a wall before you could blink.”

“Deacon,” Nate sighs, “he’s  _ harmless. _ He weighs ninety pounds soaking wet.”

“And that doesn’t make him creepy?”

“It makes him easy to punch to the floor. Jesus, Deacon, I can take care of myself.”

“That’s not -” Deacon sucks in a breath. The cold air helps cool his head, but as Nate starts to stand and gather his things, his wounds more apparent now as the frigid air sinks in and makes his movements stiff, the fire inside Deacon reignites. 

He jerks his and Nate’s bags over his shoulder before Nate can do it himself. He feels like an asshole - probably seems like more than one when he ignores Nate’s glare and starts off east instead of south, breaking off from Mel’s and Bobbi’s fading footsteps to Goodneighbor. Nate whistles for Dogmeat and limps after Deacon; Deacon, despite the jealousy fluttering under his ribs, keeps his pace slow. 

They don’t speak for the first couple miles towards HQ. Deacon can feel Nate’s resentment like a radiator giving off heat; his own anger turns to guilt the first two-hundred feet into their trip. But he’s as stubborn as he is a liar, and he refuses to be the first to break their emotionally-fueled silence. He’s tired of himself for doing it, but deep down, he doesn’t feel like he can fight it.

Evening starts settling over the Commonwealth as they approach the outer rim of Boston. Deacon keeps digging his hole, gritting his teeth as Nate’s uneven steps crunch in the snow behind him, his thoughts a whirlwind in his head. Of course he’d burn this bridge this quickly, of course he somehow allowed his emotions to get in the way of the Railroad’s best and only hope of beating the Institute,  _ of course _ this was all over some sleazy dude that had more of a chance with Nate than Deacon did. But the more Deacon runs through the events of the past couple hours, the more it angers him, and the more it angers him, the more he feels his throat closing up. 

Before they can cross the bridge towards the Cabot house, Deacon feels a hand on his elbow. He stops and turns, schooling his expression into something disgustingly blank - something familiar, no matter how ugly he feels inside for doing it. Nate stares back at him, his jaw set, his eyes level and cool. 

“Wanna sit?” Nate asks. He gestures to the curb; he settles onto the cold concrete with a painful sigh before Deacon can give an answer. Deacon hesitates, the weight of their packs practically screaming at him to settle it down and take a break, even with as close as they are to HQ. He does a quick three-sixty, spinning in place to check their surroundings, but the rolling fog covers much of the receding landscape around them, and Dogmeat seems at ease as he settles at his master’s feet. Deacon drops their duffels between himself and Nate and swings his rifle into his lap, his stomach churning, his throat dry.

Nate sucks in a deep breath, then exhales, his breath white mist floating up to mix with the gently falling snow. Resolve seems to settle on his shoulders and he turns to Deacon, his expression as open as Deacon has ever seen it. 

“You know when I first met you?” he says. “With Dez?”

Deacon feels thrown from the conversation - this isn’t where he thought it would go. He bites back a stupid remark and nods, the not-so-faded image of Nate standing in HQ’s musty crypt entryway coming easily to him, flecks of ghoul blood on his jeans, bristling with weapons and a stone-cold expression, Nick Valentine standing behind him with his laser pistol trained on Dez. Deacon remembers that night like it happened yesterday, like he’d followed Nate from Sanctuary to Diamond City and everywhere in between just moments ago. Like they’d leapt from untrusting acquaintances to brothers in only a few hours, and already Deacon was silently begging for more despite trying to wrestle himself back to the days where he was more a thorn in Nate’s side instead of someone he relied on for everything. 

It really felt like yesterday. Months ago Nate was just another project; now he was Barbara all over again. 

Nate tips his head to catch Deacon’s stare again. Deacon swallows thickly and turns away, his fingers tightening around the strap to his rifle, feeling the bite of the cold as he tries to center himself again. He feels Nate’s stare on him but can’t bring himself to meet it again. Shame runs hot up his spine. 

“You were… annoying,” Nate continues anyway. His tone is light, his smile obvious in his voice; it only twists the knife further in Deacon’s heart. “You were charming in a way that I knew you were deflecting; and only until you ran me through Switchboard did I understand how much I was helping you instead of the other way around. You wanted me to sniff out the synths the Institute sent, the ones that killed your people - not get that fancy stealth boy for Carrington.”

Deacon’s mouth twitches. Guilt washes over him, replacing the shame; he opens his mouth before he can fight back the words. 

“You were more than that,” he says hoarsely. “I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

He hears the rustle of Nate’s coat as he shrugs. “Deacon, it’s okay. I was angry back then, but I understand why now. No need to apologize.”

“Then why tell me?” Deacon snaps. “We’ve been travelling for months together, and now you decide to -”

“Mel didn’t just annoy you,” Nate says. That shuts Deacon up - Nate smiles something soft when Deacon whips his head around to look at him. “I know what you were doing, talking to him like that. It was like you were deflecting like you usually do, but not for yourself. He made you angry for how he talked and treated me.  _ Me _ , Deacon, of all people.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I … don’t want to say it if you don’t want me to, but… It’s kind of a big elephant, man. We gotta talk about it.”

Deacon sighs. His gut twists and knots, the uncomfortable feeling coming back, his mouth watering like he might puke. He shakes his head, and before he knows it a manic laugh is bubbling up his throat, and when he raises his hands to rub under his glasses his hands shake. 

Now or never, he says. You take the swing or accept the foul. 

“Did Nora… was she your first girlfriend?”

Nate looks taken aback. His mouth twitches, and Deacon watches in abject guilt as he starts to play with the ring on his left hand. But he recovers quickly, nodding soundlessly, stray hairs catching on the cuff of the bandages around his head. 

“Yeah,” he says gruffly. “I - she and I met in high school. We were together until - uh. Yes. She was.”

Deacon hates himself for asking, especially because of Nate’s jumbled answer. Nate looks nervous and heartbroken now, his eyes far away as he stares at Dogmeat at his feet. Deacon clears his throat and continues like it didn’t hurt him as much as it hurt Nate to have asked. 

“I - love doesn’t come easily in the ‘Wealth,” Deacon says. Nate’s attention snaps back to Deacon as he surges forward, unhurried to get the words out even as he feels like he’s ripping at the seams. “I was a weird kid, and growing up I was always a loner. I guess I got used to being alone, and lying came easy, to a point that pretending to not be myself became a tool that got me what I wanted. I wasn’t lying about the gang, and about Barbara. I may have embellished, but I didn’t… didn’t lie. Not about that. Never… 

“Never… have I loved someone as much as her. She wasn’t my first girlfriend - wasn’t even my first time. And when she died, everything was just black and white. I didn’t see greys. Then the Railroad picked me up, and it was mission after mission, digging into pre-war military projects trying to find the Institute, trying to find who made Barbara and why they’d just… let her go, to suffer like the rest of us.”

“Do you think you found your answers?” Nate asks softly. 

Deacon wants to say yes. He wants to say that he’d done his work; he’d bled for the Railroad and expected to be rewarded for it, just like the rest of them. He’d trekked from the ass end of the Capital to Boston and back an endless amount of times, he tracked Brotherhood targets with ties to the Institute and he’d dug through so much pre-war correspondence to the point that he feels like he’s the only person in the world that fully understands what actually happened those two-hundred fateful years ago. He wonders if now is the time to stop telling the truth, to go back to being the liar and the cheat; he wonders if he made the right decision in opening himself up to Nate so much and so deeply. 

He wonders if any of it will be worth it in the end. Good, bad, or ugly - he turns to Nate and thinks that if this is how it’s all going to go down, if he’s to be the one to stand next to this man and see all this through to the bitter end, if it’ll answer all his questions - if it’ll be worth it, then he should take that chance. He looks at Nate, into his wonderfully green eyes, so deep and open, his heart laid bare for the world to see. He looks at Nate and sees what he could be if he just took that single step forward. 

It’s momentous, and for a moment Deacon wants to flee. It’d be easy to run away and start a new life; he’s sure Dez would find someone to replace him. Nate will continue to work with her because she’s his ticket to finding his son, but Deacon? He’s a security risk already, and now that he’s revealed so much, he’s - 

“Deacon.”

Deacon’s brain screeches to a halt at the sound of Nate’s voice. He sucks in a shaky breath and nods, answering Nate’s question, his heart thundering in his ears. Nate waits patiently at his side; for once, Deacon doesn’t have a stupid wisecrack to break the silence. 

He sucks in a cold breath anyway and speaks. He owes Nate this much. 

“I saw you leave the Vault,” Deacon says. “I followed you throughout the Commonwealth. I saw what you did - how you helped whoever you could, even when you were so confused you couldn’t speak. I saw you and I saw - 

“I saw… what I could have been. What my life could have been like had I walked honestly. You were so open and free with your story; you helped who you could because you could, and I didn’t know if I could trust you because of it. And then you crawled your sorry ass to Dez’s doorstep and you begged her to help you, and everything came clicking into place for me. I knew what I had to do right then, and it wasn’t follow you in secret. I had to be there when you cut the Institute down, and if it meant destroying myself in the process, then I would fucking do it.”

Deacon stops. His words ring out in the cold, his voice having risen part way through his rant. Dogmeat is sitting up now, his ears pricked toward Deacon, alert and ready to react to a threat he cannot perceive; Nate, however, sits quietly, his hands limp in his lap, his eyes still trained on Deacon’s face. His expression is unreadable, and already Deacon is beginning to regret ever opening his stupid mouth. 

He starts to get up. He’s not in a hurry, but he feels the urge to run, so he obeys it, some base instinct inside him reacting before he can stop it. He shoulders his pack and flings the strap of his rifle over his shoulder; but before he can turn, Nate grabs him, his hand hot against the cold of Deacon’s wrist, anchoring the both of them to the spot. 

Nate tips his face, and Deacon turns to look at him despite himself. Nate lets him go, trusting Deacon not to run. It takes everything inside him not to betray that trust and bolt as soon as Nate’s fingers loosen against his skin. 

In the face of everything - of every single guilty admission - Nate smiles. Warm, genuine, free. Deacon doesn’t understand, and it must show on his face because Nate’s smile grows toothy.

“That’s the most you’ve said to me at one time, you know that?” he says quietly.

Deacon’s guilt doesn’t melt away, but it does temporarily ebb. “Yeah, well. You started it.”

Nate nods, gracious. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like your feelings were going unnoticed. What happened today… “

“Is my problem,” Deacon says. “It’s okay, Boss. I can handle it.”

“Can you?” Nate says. “You seemed angry. I think we should talk about that.”

Deacon sighs. He didn’t acknowledge Nate’s question before - he tried to, but everything inside him screamed at him to avoid it. He doesn’t feel like Nate will take him as seriously as he is now; what if it’s all for nothing? What if Nate betrays him? What if Nate betrays everyone?

“Do you want me to go first?”

Deacon’s eyes snap to Nate’s - Nate raises a brow in askance. For one bitter, brief moment, Deacon wants to continue on his way; no way in hell is he going to have this conversation. He just avoided it, why should they keep beating it? Wasn’t there a colloquial for that? 

Nate clears his throat. “Okay. I’ll go first.” He keeps Deacon’s stare, his jaw tightening for only a moment before every weight he’s been carrying seems to lift off his shoulders at once. In that moment, Deacon sees him for what he is: a man struggling to find his path in this new, strange world, only a couple months new to this harsh place that was once his home. He sees a man who wears his heart on his sleeve, trying so desperately to make connections where the ones he had had been ripped away from him. He is a reflection of Deacon in that moment, and - no, not something as two-dimensional as that. He isn’t a mirror, or a still lake. He’s much more than that - more than what Deacon had been and will be. He’s -

“ - in love with you.”

Deacon’s brain stops. Everything around him comes crashing to a loud, cacophonous halt. Where there once was this even, radio-static background noise of the Commonwealth around him, now is a silence so enormous he can hear his lungs wheezing in his chest. His fingers go limp around the stock of his rifle, some distant part of his thoughts grateful he had the forethought to wrap the strap around his shoulder. He looks up and Nate is standing there, frank and honest, a small, hesitant smile on his face. Deacon’s heart picks up but instead of saying anything back, he nods, disbelief pulling uncomfortably at his lips. 

Nate laughs, not at all confident. “Did you hear me at all? You look like you saw a ghost.”

Deacon clears his throat. “Yeah, I -” His voice cracks, but he can’t find the energy to feel embarrassed about it. “Yeah. I did. It’s. Uhm.”

Nate cocks a hopeful brow. “Mutual?”

Deacon can’t believe this is happening to him. He nods again; his brain can’t find the words. 

Nate holds out his palm between them. Deacon doesn’t take it immediately - he doesn’t know what taking it means. A promise? A deal? What are the rules here?

He doesn’t realize he’s said the last part aloud until Nate shakes his head, his grin turning small and understanding. “You can take it or leave it, Deacon,” he says. “This isn’t anything. If you don’t want it to be.” 

“Isn’t - don’t you want this?” Deacon hears himself say. Isn’t that the point of all this song and dance?

Nate shrugs. Something like hurt flashes in his eyes, and even as quickly as Nate hides it, Deacon knows that if he doesn’t follow his heart, Nate will forever be that much colder. “It’s your decision. I - have strong feelings for you. I won’t hide them. I honestly don’t think I can. But if this is the line in the sand, I won’t cross it. You have boundaries too, Deacon.”

“You said,” Deacon starts slowly, “that you love me.”

Nate nods. He drops his hand, resignation already closing his features. 

“You mean that?” 

Deacon waits. Nate jerks his head again - Deacon can see he doesn’t know what to think now. At some point he has to stop dragging Nate in circles, and while he feels like he’s ripping his soul out of his chest, it’d be even harder to turn Nate away when the moment has already come and gone. 

Nate’s hurting from Nora still, Deacon knows, but he also knows what a heart wants even when it partly belongs to someone else. He feels that tug and takes the leap; he reaches out and takes Nate’s limp hand at his side, trying to fight the nervous bile at the back of his throat even as he smiles back at Nate. 

Nate squeezes his fingers tightly in his own, and now more than ever does Deacon want to get to know those hands. He knots their fingers together and wraps his other hand around them, feeling the warmth between them, the slight pulse in Nate’s palm. Nate grins, simple and bright, but doesn’t move forward like Deacon expected him to, doesn’t surge towards him to kiss him or hug him. 

No, nothing like that. Nate respects the unspoken boundary. They still have a lot to say, and Deacon’s own insecurities won’t just go away from this simple but momentous gesture; but he feels the layers already starting to slip away. Nate picks up his duffel wordlessly and they hike together back to HQ, their hands untangling as they get close to the city. They walk closer together to make up for the drop in contact, and Deacon, for the life of him, can’t remember the last time he felt so warm despite the cold. 

 

+++


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something shorter. I apologize, but this little interlude is tying some stuff together, and it didn't fit the rest of what I have written. Something longer to come later!

+++

  
It’s a warm night. Warmer than it has been, considering frost still coats every naked surface and the wasteland hasn’t deemed to melt the two feet of snow packed across the earth. Nate’s Pipboy doesn’t read the temperature, though, so instead of moaning about it he wraps himself up tighter in his jackets and scarf and keeps walking, his feet burning with every step he takes.

Nate is pushing ahead, already the distance between them yawning as they walk. They fought earlier - Deacon’s fault. Something stupid, something that Deacon honestly can’t remember because it was just  _ that _ stupid. He apologized, but Nate doesn’t do anything in halves, so he just stormed ahead with Deacon obediently at his heels. 

A nice night, though, considering everything. Dogmeat is enjoying being so close to Sanctuary: he’s running ahead, his master withholding the calls to bring him closer in case of danger. Deacon’s never seen a dog so happy, or his lover - or whatever they are - so  _ pissed _ . 

A weird night. A nice night. He’s carrying forty pounds of guns and ammunition on his back, the stars are out, and the moon is full - no need for Nate’s Pipboy light, the moon is so full and bright. The light dances in his dark hair, bounces off the shoulders of his parka, illuminates the faint patches of lighter skin crawling up the side of his face - a brightness hardly dulled by the moonlight reflecting off the quiet snow. Deacon wants to tell him he looks beautiful tonight, but withholds the compliment. Nate hasn’t stopped his angry pace since Concord, and Deacon doesn’t want to risk getting his head bitten off if he can help it, no matter how genuine he feels. 

They get to Sanctuary and unload. The repaired street lights don’t dim the starlight above; Deacon cranes his neck the whole walk down the street to the shared room he has with Nate in the common house. Dogmeat bolts to his spot at the end of their bed and lays down even as Nate ignores sleep and goes straight to the side door down the hall, passing bedrooms with people already drifting away. Deacon stands there in the doorway, debating on following him or bolting altogether - he could so easily disappear into the chilly night, the stars dancing above him, never to be seen again.

But he doesn’t. If he wants this to work, he has to learn to squash that urge. He has to learn to give Nate his time and his presence, to not melt into the shadows, leaving this broken, confused man to his fate alone. 

No. He follows Nate through the doorway to the porch attached to the side of the common house. It used to be a carport, but Nate expanded it with a nice little wooden add-on, a small table with chairs ringing its edge and a radio set to Diamond City’s station on the top. A small crystal ashtray sits next to it, an elegant little thing that Deacon found dumpster diving for Nate’s birthday gift. He cleaned it in the river and gave it to him on a night like this one, clear and cool, the stars peeking out to see Nate’s shy smile. 

Nate drags a chair out onto the concrete pad, taking the ashtray with him, and plops down, balancing the ashtray on his knee. Deacon quietly does the same, and when Nate can’t find a light in his pockets, Deacon leans over, striking a match from his own pocket and holding it up as Nate leans in also, puffing as his homemade cigarette catches. 

“I’m sorry,” Deacon says. He waves the match until it dies and crunches it under his boot. “I just - I’m sorry. For today. You didn’t deserve what I said.”

Nate blows out smoke and then passes the cigarette to Deacon. He takes it, knocks the ash off in the tray on Nate’s knee, and takes a taste for himself. He doesn’t like it - too sweet for his own liking - but he enjoys it because it’s Nate, and he likes everything Nate likes. 

God. He’s a sap. 

He passes the cigarette back. Nate takes it and turns to him, an apologetic look on his face. It makes Deacon’s heart sink. 

“Me too,” he says. It’s quiet and broken, like he’s been beating himself up all day. “I overreacted.”

Deacon shrugs. “I deserved it.”

“No.”

“Up for debate,” Deacon says, a smile growing on his face. Nate frowns, scoots his chair closer so their elbows are touching. Deacon spreads his left hand out, palm up, and Nate takes it, lacing their fingers together. “You were always too good for me.”

It’s Nate’s turn to shrug. “I just like you. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Puh-lease,” Deacon snorts. “If anyone is getting flattered it’s you.”

The moonlight makes it easy to see the blush bloom on Nate’s face. “Now who’s too good for who?”

They laugh, Nate embarrassed and Deacon much more so. He wants to take off his sunglasses but he doesn’t - they’re still visible from the street, and he doesn’t want the moment ruined by Piper trying to get a good look at his face. Instead he brings Nate’s hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it, letting it linger there, letting Nate feel the smile he feels no shame in showing. 

“Before the war, I could never see the stars, even out here,” Nate says suddenly, his cigarette burning out between his lips. 

Deacon cranes his neck back to look at the stars. Nate does the same, and for a minute they just stare upwards. Deacon recognizes some star formations, but mostly he just looks for Venus, for Mars, for the Northern Star. He finds both planets but not the star, but something stupid and cheesy comes to mind, making him forget about looking for it.

“You know, that’s not much of a problem now,” Deacon says, turning his head to look at Nate. Nate brings his gaze down from the night sky to Deacon, a quizzical smile tugging at this full lips. It takes everything Deacon has to not burst out laughing as he takes in a breath to talk. “The stars in your eyes make up for it.”

It’s quirky enough to elicit a little laugh from Nate, something honest that Deacon doesn’t hear very often. Nate smacks him in the shoulder as he stands, and Deacon can’t help but shove him back, trying to cover up the embarrassment of speaking so plainly by roughhousing.

“Where did that come from?” Nate laughs. Deacon shrugs, raising a brow over his glasses, a challenge as he tries to wrangle Nate into a headlock.

“The deepest, darkest depths of my cold, black heart,” Deacon replies, and Nate laughs harder. “I’m serious! You don’t know what kinda monsters are lurking in there. Maybe you’ll find the Loch Ness Monster.”

“You’re stupid,” Nate says breathlessly. He lets Deacon overtake him, submitting to the noogie Deacon rubs into his scalp. He shakes it off when they stand, his teeth white in the low light from the moon, the mood from their hours-old argument gone from his face. The smile on his lips is happy and genuine, and Deacon’s heart swells because of it. 

“Yeah,” Deacon breaths. He feels Nate’s arms come up around his neck, his weight comfortable and warm as it envelops him. His hands naturally seek out Nate’s hips under his jacket, and suddenly Deacon is home, the small little urge within him that wants him to run, to flee, to disappear and never come back squashed as Nate sighs a quiet  _ I love you _ into his coat. 

Their closeness is still unfamiliar. It worries Deacon, a small part of him screaming at him that he doesn’t deserve it, but -

“Yeah,” Deacon says again. He does. He does deserve it. Every little moment, every whispered sweet nothing. “But you’re worth it.”

He deserves it. And so does Nate. And by God if he has to force himself to see that - to make  _ Nate _ see that - he will. 

It’s the least he could do to repay him.

 

+++


	8. Chapter 8

+++

 

But because of who they are and who they work for, they don’t get time to dwell on each other. 

Nate, however much he wants to spend time working out the knots in their new relationship, jumps into the work enthusiastically. Deacon follows him from one end of the Boston waterfront to the other, combing high schools, university campuses, and crumbling libraries for any sort of literature on particle physics and any math higher than college pre-algebra. Nate does this while still somehow finding the time to uplift settlements for the Minutemen and help a kid home after living two hundred years in a fridge. If Deacon had been told to report all of Nate’s activities while doing Railroad work, he’s sure HQ would think he was crazier than he already was.

Deacon does his own work too. It’s not as glamorous as Nate’s is, but Deacon picks his way through ruins and crumpled buildings to dead drops in the middle of the night while Nate and Dogmeat sleep somewhere safe. He stashes supplies for tourists and makes sure all Railroad escape routes are still Institute free - at some point he makes time to capture another bunker for a potential bug-out location for HQ should the need arise. He makes it from HQ to an old military stockpile on the edges of the glowing sea in eight hours that night - Nate, to his credit, calls it a day when he sees how breathless and exhausted Deacon was that morning, aiming for some easy supply runs to the Co-op for the afternoon if Deacon woke from the nap Nate made him take. 

Deacon did take the nap, but he didn’t even fall asleep. Nate let him use his back as a pillow as he leaned against him while Nate cleaned their rifles. Deacon had been so terrified it was a dream that it took everything he had to feign sleep instead of actually getting some rest. It’s a wonder Dogmeat didn’t tattle on him by asking for attention, but for now Deacon is grateful for small mercies. Now that he’s in deep with his more vulnerable feelings out in the open, it’s all he’s going to get.

By the time they get back to HQ with a decent amount of reading for Tinker Tom to do, the work suddenly stops. They show up through the escape tunnel, hauling a couple more textbooks than Nate thought they’d find, and the moment they’re set down on the desk of their favourite resident weirdo, Dez shakes her head at them and motions them over to the war table.

“Something the matter?” Nate asks. Confusion is plain on his face - an expression he wears a lot lately. Deacon has caused that expression more often than not these days, even with the slow steps they’re taking towards something more resembling a relationship. It hurts for reasons he doesn’t understand when it’s turned on Dez.

Dez shrugs. She gestures with the hand holding her cigarette to the pile of books they hauled back from various dilapidated libraries and schools, then to the massive map in front of her.

“I think they know,” she says, as quietly as she can with not-so-discreet eyes watching them from around the crypt. “Not what you’re doing, or where we are or how, but I think they know you talked to Virgil. Courser patterns are tightening up, and synths aren’t showing up around the Commonwealth anymore. It’s like they’ve locked everything down before a storm.”

“Do we have any sort of recourse? Should we stop operations as well?” Nate says, ever the cautious one.

Dez kind of smiles - a weird smile between amused and condescending, like lecturing a young boy instead of a man more than two-hundred years her senior. Deacon hears himself snort out a laugh; Dez shoots him a glare, but doesn’t reprimand him for it.

“No,” she says evenly. “We continue working.”

Deacon feels the corner of his mouth twitch into an uneasy grin. “Dez, please. A little action is better than none.”

Deacon doesn’t often question her actions - at least to her face, and it shows. She stares at him with a look that says  _ I know exactly what you’re going to do to sabotage my plans but I’m going to tell you what to do anyway _ and keeps it trained on him the entire time she speaks. Nate, to his credit, pretends not to see it; Deacon glares her down from behind his glasses. 

“Once Tom has done his homework, the complicated building of the teleporter will start. We estimate it will take about a month to finish,” she says. She knocks ash from her cigarette into a cracked glass ashtray on the war table. She doesn’t break eye contact with Deacon. “I expect both of you to stay in the field. Help Glory and High Rise, but stay below radar. We can assume the Institute is watching you near Diamond City - Tom’s MILA seems to confirm sightings around there. But don’t poke them, and everywhere else there’s no confirmed sightings, act like there is. Now is a delicate time for us; we can’t afford to lag behind now.”

“Stay ahead of the bullet, huh?” Nate muses. He sighs, his shoulders sagging. His gaze is far away as he stares at the map on the war table. “Not like there’s anything better to do.”

Dez nods, finally breaking the staring contest with Deacon. Deacon feels his skin crawl when her eyes move away. He doesn’t know why her sudden disinterest in him makes him uneasy - he doesn’t get time to dwell on it when she tosses her head towards the main crypt entrance and takes a drag from her cigarette. 

“Go to Diamond City for now,” she says. “Lay low. Do some work for Nick - God knows he needs it. Stay there, make yourself known to the Institute spies there. When we need you at Mercer safehouse, we will send a runner.”

Nate sighs again and nods. Deacon squeezes his elbow as he steps away - Nate gives him a small, grateful smile, then turns towards their tiny room in the back of the crypt to organize their stuff. Dogmeat pads behind him, and when Deacon moves to follow him, Dez shakes her head. Deacon stays put, rigid, his shoulders riding up from the tension in her face. 

She looks almost pained when he looks harder - he raises a brow at her, uneasy, silently questioning if it’s him or Nate she’s worrying about. She turns her head, making sure any curious eyes that were fixed on them are ushered away by her stare, then steps closer to him, seemingly unaware of the good foot he has in height over her when he straightens up instinctively from her authority. 

“You take care of him,” she says, hard despite her whisper. He opens his mouth to argue - what does she know about what he’d do for Nate? - but she shakes her head, shutting him up. “No. You take care of him. He is hurting, Deacon, and I know you see that, but I have a feeling that once we get into the Institute, it won’t be an answer he wants. You understand?”

He does - he’s had the same train of thought for a long time now. Every time Nate stops to rest, every time his body and mind isn’t occupied from everyone else’s exhausting, mind-numbing busy work, he defaults back to a worried father. Even Deacon forgets sometimes, but then in those moments when the stresses of the world fall off him only to be replaced by his own, he remembers what and who this man truly is, and why he’s even trying so hard in the first place. Deacon would bet all that he’s worth - which isn’t much - on Nate doing all this for everyone for purely his own gain, even if it all comes from the same gooey, warm, caring core that Nate doesn’t work to hide. 

Deacon feels awful for taking advantage of that in the beginning. He’d stomped all over Nate’s goodwill purely to get what he wanted for the Railroad, and back then, Deacon could rationalize it all away for the synths it would help save. For the people that made Barbara to be brought justice. It was easy, waving off Nate’s frequent (and still occurring) sleepless nights, his exhaustion during the day and his restlessness when he finally catches a few hours of rest. Deacon would disappear like he always did during those nights and run more work for Dez, giving detailed reports on their new weapon and his fitness for working for them. 

Dez was worried at first with Nate’s seemingly slow fall into destruction. She needed a tool to pry the tight lid on the Institute’s secrets - one that frequently bent under intense pressure wouldn’t be of use to her. But for some reason, Deacon began to fake his reports, omitting information completely if he couldn’t come up with a believable excuse for Nate’s slowness most days. Nate was a strong man, with a true moral compass and the will and drive to find his son if it drove him into the ground, but even he had his limits, and with the amount of work he picked up from every sorry trader or crying farmer, he was crashing into the dirt faster than his friends could pick him up. Deacon ended up faking reports for Nate to the Minutemen so Preston would lay off him for a couple weeks, and by the time he was that deep, he’d been lying to Dez long enough that it was second nature to fake Nate’s chickenscratch handwriting for anyone officially asking after Nate’s health.

He sighs and nods to Dez, silently acknowledging to her request and the lie she caught him in. He should have known she’d catch him; he wasn’t ever good at keeping himself hidden from her. She pats his arm and motions for him to follow Nate, so he does, feeling heavy and light at the same time. He doesn’t know if it’s his heart or his head that hurts so much. 

“Doing okay?” 

Deacon collapses onto the bed next to Nate, humming in answer to his question. Nate has his shirt rucked up and his jeans unbuttoned to better peel away the bandages wrapped around his ribs. Deacon flicks open his pocket knife and waves away Nate’s hands with his, gently sliding the blade against his skin with the sharp edge facing away from him. The bandages cut away easily, revealing the dark ring of bruising around his middle. The gauze is spotted with near-brown blotches of blood, some in concentric circles while others are dark blots still wet from Nate’s weeping wounds. All of this from their fight through the sewers with Mel and Bobbi - all the more for Deacon to be angry about, both at Nate and their previous employers. 

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Nate mumbles quickly. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

He looks guilty - Deacon, for the life of him, doesn’t understand why. Instead, he crumples the bandages and tosses them next to his pack to be burned later, then touches Nate’s shoulders to turn him so he’s fully facing Deacon. 

“It’s alright if it is,” Deacon says. “We don’t have to set off to Diamond City just yet. We can wait a day or two.”

“Here?” Nate scoffs. “I don’t want to be around Carrington that long.”

Deacon grins and nods in answer - he doesn’t blame Nate. Carrington tends to get angrier as the weather gets worse, which, for a person who doesn’t get out much, doesn’t makes sense. But it makes him difficult to approach, especially now with Nate wounded and needing care wherever he goes. Deacon pulls off Nate’s shirt over his head gently and folds it before setting it aside, motioning for him to sit still as he slinks out to get a rag with warm water, hydrogen peroxide, clean gauze, and medical tape from their resident bitchy doctor. 

“Dab, don’t rub,” Deacon says, holding out the rag to Nate when he gets back. The other man takes it and dabs at the dark teeth marks the ghouls had made in his skin, his cheek and jaw tensing as he goes over the deeper ones. Deacon can’t remember how exactly the ghouls had gotten to him, but he does remember them trampling Nate at one point the moment he’d stepped out of Sonya’s freshly dug tunnel, five or six of the wrinkly monsters rushing at whatever came through first. The amount of effort it took to battle them off and keep Mel and Bobbi from putting a bullet in Nate’s brain had been enormous; more so when Nate came up bleeding and gasping, his head scratched up and his clothes ripped from teeth and nails alike. 

He’d hidden it well in the moment by buttoning up his parka as quickly as he could. He’s lucky he hasn’t contracted any sort of noticeable infection, and judging by how quickly the wounds are scabbing over, Deacon’s amazed nothing negative seems to have happened to him at all. Nate hands him the rag - only slightly stained with blood - and raises his arms to hook his hands behind his head. 

A silent invitation to go ahead and take it from here, Deacon realizes. He breaks the crude seal around the plastic encasing the bundle of gauze he stole from Carrington and unravels it, laying its length across his lap. He cuts a fifth of it from the end and folds it into a rag, then daubs hydrogen peroxide onto it before lightly wiping Nate’s wounds with it. 

Nate hisses as it makes contact, the muscles in his abdomen tightening, his expression pinching as the peroxide bubbles in his wounds. 

“Not a great feeling, huh?” Deacon says. Nate huffs, grinning. 

“There’s better things I’d rather be feeling,” Nate sighs. “Nothing like bursting blood cells to really set the mood.”

Deacon smiles apologetically, placing his palm gently on Nate’s side under his ribs as he continues dabbing at them, wiping up the pink foam that develops as he goes back over them. “Yeah, well. I don’t know about you, but being shirtless while a guy rubs chemicals all over me is  _ my _ idea of fun.”

Nate barks out a laugh, jarring Deacon’s hand away from his chest. Deacon tosses away the soiled scrap of gauze with the rest and scoots closer before taping one end of the clean bandages to a relatively bruise-free spot over Nate’s top surgery scar on his right side. He starts to wrap the bandages around his back and chest, carefully looping them under his arms and taping down the new layer so it stays secure. Nate relaxes his arms when Deacon finishes, flexing only a little to test the tape pulling against his skin. Deacon raises a brow, not even trying to hide the grin blooming on his face. 

Nate catches the look and smiles back, only slightly shy. “Like what you see?”

Deacon waggles his brows. “Yes, sir. Any chance of seconds?”

That startles a laugh out of Nate. Deacon is only half kidding - the entire situation makes him beyond uncomfortable. He feels the familiar tug of lust in his gut, the hot flush crawling up his neck sure to be noticeable even from this small bit of flirting; but there’s also anger there, brewing under his skin, the sight of Nate’s wounds slinging him back a week before when he got them. His brain unhelpfully conjures up Mel’s face, his greasy stare as it swept Nate up and down, drinking him in where he had no right to. The anger overtakes him briefly until Nate shifts, the broad expanse of his tan skin catching Deacon’s eye again.

Nate nudges him with his knee pressed against Deacon’s. He smiles at Deacon’s slow drag of his stare up Nate’s chest to his face. 

“Eyes up here, Deacon,” he says softly. 

His nose scrunches as he laughs - Deacon huffs along with him, his face tight with the dumb grin he can feel on his face. It’s so stupid, the fluttering feeling Nate instills in him, how it absorbs everything else and fills him with something he hasn’t felt in an incredibly long time. He feels like it’s been forever since Barbara - feels like decades since the last time she smiled at him, butterflies taking flight in his chest as she did. The experience was so similar that the feeling of tears pricking behind his eyes startles him into a laugh; Nate’s grinning face quickly deflates into worry. 

“Hey, are you okay?” he says quickly. His hands hover Deacon’s shoulders and arms, a warmth radiating from them that he deeply wishes to sink into. “Was it something I said?”

Deacon shakes his head. He scrubs his palms under his glasses, trying to press away the tears still pooling in the corners of his eyes. He keeps his hands there for a few long moments as he calms his beating heart and thick breathing, Nate mumbling in worry, his body dangerously close. Deacon thinks about the consequences of his next action and decides if ever there was a time to fully trust Nate, it’d be now. 

Now, he tells himself. Now or never. 

“I’m okay,” he murmurs. Nate’s hands still over his biceps; Deacon sucks in a breath, wishing to every god out there to not convince him out of this. “Just. I need to do something.”

“Okay,” Nate says slowly. He sounds skeptical as he settles back, the press of his leg against Deacon’s a welcome warmth. Deacon isn’t sure he could do this without him still there - even if he was across the room Deacon would have backed out already. This one wall, this tiny little thing, and everything would change. Removing this one piece of defense would mean life or death for Deacon. 

“Don’t laugh,” Deacon says. “Or else I’ll have to get a new mug, and I’m quite attached to this one. Kind of won me a nice guy and all that.”

Nate hums a low laugh. “Deacon. I won’t laugh. I promise.”

“So serious.”

“Deacon.”

Nate’s tone is light, but Deacon knows what he means. He wants Deacon to make absolutely sure this is what he wants before anything else is said. He rolls with Deacon’s punches so easily, the banter coming from him like it’s second nature for him to react to the stupid shit Deacon spits out. Their personalities grated against each other at first, Deacon’s fluid edges never quite melding right with Nate’s more rigid, angular personality. Nate was the first person Deacon really had to try with; he was the first person Deacon really thought he might lose.

And then one day, three weeks after they cleared Switchboard, they suddenly clicked. Like a gearshift in a stubborn transmission finally sliding into first, they took off, their repartee easy, bouncing from one near hit to the next in a flowing language no one else seemed to understand. Deacon idly wonders if that was the moment he fell in love with Nate. A large part of him thinks it was the moment Nate showed up at Railroad HQ with a chip on his shoulder and a kid to save. 

Deacon’s flight or fight response abates; his breathing evens, and the nagging voice in his brain telling him to never trust Nate, ever, is squashed. Deacon sits up straight and squeezes his eyes shut, then pulls off his sunglasses, holding them out in the general direction of Nate’s face. 

His fist bumps with Nate’s nose, causing the other man to snort a laugh and grab them out of Deacon’s hand. Deacon grins despite the bubbling pukey feeling in his stomach growing stronger, and after a few seconds of silence has to swallow the unpleasant watery feeling in his throat so he doesn’t actually throw up. He risks peeking to see what exactly Nate is up to and immediately regrets it.

The other man’s smile is small but vibrant, effortless in a way that calms Deacon’s nerves. He’s so used to seeing everything with a dark brown tint to it that he’s momentarily surprised at the color of Nate’s eyes - a deep green with flecks of blues and browns mixed in. Fitting, considering this is the first time Nate’s seeing his eyes as well; he doesn’t pull his gaze away on those grounds, letting Nate stare at him as he stares at Nate. 

Nate folds the sunglasses carefully in his hands and holds them back out to Deacon. His smile is still easy as Deacon takes them from him and holds them in his lap. He doesn’t make a move towards Deacon like he thought he would - instead he props his chin on his knee as he draws his leg up against himself, wrapping his arms around it, the wedding ring on his left hand flashing against his tan skin in the low light of the room. 

“I feel like every week you reveal something about yourself to me,” Nate says softly. Deacon shrugs one shoulder, abruptly flooded with the urge to slap his glasses back on and dig out his wig. He fights it down with a lopsided smile that Nate returns. 

“I had to do something. You took off your shirt for me. It was only fair.”

“Taking off your glasses is equivalent to taking off your shirt?” Nate laughs. 

Deacon groans. “Okay. I’m really putting these back on now.”

Nate’s laugh turns into a wheeze as Deacon puts his glasses back on. Deacon only half-intended it to be funny, but a large part of him is glad Nate accepted the redirect. His companion falls back onto the bed in a half-laugh, half-groan as the freshly-cleaned wounds around his ribs appear to hurt with his giggles. Deacon rolls his eyes and kicks off his boots, acting annoyed as he gets ready for bed. 

“Deacon,” Nate rasps, trying to get his giggles under control. “Deacon, please. I appreciate it.”

Deacon turns and waggles his brow at Nate, wordlessly assuring him that he’s acting and not seriously angry. “Yeah? I just revealed my soul to you, man. How do we always end up like this?”

Nate makes a questioning noise. He’s more under control of himself now, laying on the bed on his side with his arms wrapped around himself. He grins when he thinks Deacon isn’t looking - a big perk with the sunglasses. 

“I dunno,” he says. “You’re the master of manipulation. You tell me.”

“Manipulation? Ouch.”

Deacon feigns hurt by placing his hand over his heart - Nate rolls his eyes this time and kicks the blankets away to allow Deacon into bed. Weeks before, when they first confessed to each other, they came to a wordless agreement that their sleeping arrangements wouldn’t change. If the situation called for it, they’d sleep together, and with how the weather had been lately, it was almost always a given that they’d end up curled into each other to keep warm through the night. Their relationship may have changed, but it still felt the same slipping into bed with Nate, their limbs knocking together and their bodies falling into a similar position to accommodate each other as they slept. 

Except lately, they faced each other now. That part was weird for Deacon, knowing he was more vulnerable with Nate watching every mismanaged tick in Deacon’s face. But so far nothing has come of it, and usually Nate falls off into fretful sleep before Deacon does - if he sleeps at all. Now, Nate’s face is relaxed and sleepy, exhausted from the day, silently thankful they get to rest someplace safe. 

Nate shifts closer, pressing his forehead against Deacon’s. Their breaths mingle - Deacon’s heart jumps into his throat. They haven’t kissed, and he really doesn’t want to now, not with Dez in the other room. With  _ Carrington _ in the other room. He moves to shift away and - 

“Thank you,” Nate says softly. 

Deacon freezes. He meets Nate’s eyes, and even behind the tinted lenses, he knows Nate sees him. He swallows thickly and nods, words fleeing him, his brain coming to a stuttering halt as Nate shifts back away, establishing space between them that makes Deacon feel more comfortable. 

Nate falls asleep fifteen minutes later. Deacon doesn’t sleep at all, but he stays where he is, resting his body, allowing himself to build up strength for the hike the next day. When Nate’s Pipboy sings its morning alarm jingle at ten in the morning, they both get up and start the day, unloading and loading what they do and don’t need, stopping to see Dez for a confirmation of orders, and heading out into the cold.

 

+++


	10. Chapter 10

+++

 

“You sure this’ll work?”

Nate gives him an unsettled look, but otherwise keeps his stare fixed ahead of him on the teleporter. “Uh. Would it be bad luck if I say no?”

Deacon shrugs. “I dunno. It’s not like you won’t explode into a cloud of atoms if this thing doesn’t work.”

Nate laughs unsteadily. “Right. Forgot about that part.”

Immediately Deacon regrets trying to make light of the situation. Nate had spent undue weeks gathering the necessary supplies to build the teleporter, not to mention the hiking to and from HQ and Sanctuary to relay the building instructions as they changed during construction. Just in the last month they’d racked up over four-hundred miles between HQ runs, Deacon’s work, and Nate’s adventures helping the small and downtrodden. 

He nudges Nate’s shoulder with his own, quirking a brow over his glasses so Nate knows he’s looking at him. He smiles too, but Nate doesn’t return it. He keeps his voice low as well to not alert Dez or Tom across the room as they work to get the teleporter live. 

“This is about helping synths,” Deacon starts, “but it’s also about Shaun. You worked hard to get here. It’ll work.”

“Just like that?” Nate says just as quietly. His lip wavers and his eyes shine like he’s fighting off tears, but they never fall. Deacon wants to kick himself. “Some slapdash plans put together but an Institute runaway and a drug addict? I’m not that stupid, Deacon.”

“No, but you’re smart enough to know that there’s no other choice. We can’t exactly send monkeys through this first.”

Nate’s expression pinches. He glances back to the teleporter as it starts to whir to life - the bulbs hanging from the ceiling dim for a moment before brightening again as the teleporter begins to suck power from the nuclear generator in the other room. Deacon wants to comfort him, take him into his arms and protect him from whatever truth the teleporter will uncover. He shouldn’t have to face this - there’s only two outcomes to this, and Deacon’s not sure either of them will be what Nate wants. 

Either Shaun is alive, or he’s not. And if he’s not… 

Nate shrugs away from the wall and circles around to the computers Tom is at, effectively cutting off whatever reparations Deacon could make. Deacon follows him anyway, ever dutiful, and stands near him to assure Nate even in a quiet way that he’s sorry for being crass about potentially phasing out of existence if this all goes sideways. 

“Working so far?” Nate asks Tom. Tom gives an encouraging nod but doesn’t speak, intently typing commands into the computer bank, double and triple checking his work as he goes. Deacon turns around and starts to circle the teleporter pad, not hearing Dez give Nate a set of orders and the Patriot holotape. 

He’s halfway around the room when Nate suddenly hops up onto the pad, his rifle slung around his back and his duffel over his shoulder. He’s not even sure where he produced those from - they’d been vetted at the door of the warehouse even though they’d been the ones to put the damn place together, their guns and belongings stored away in another room under guard. Dogmeat hadn’t even been allowed inside on account of the unknown effects of the teleporter on organic beings. “Precautions,” Dez had said. “Just in case all that ammunition goes off and we’re standing around it waiting to get a bullet between the eyes.”

Deacon thinks she just wanted to watch him be forcibly separated from his precious rifle. Nate had huffed a laugh and shook his head when Deacon said so. 

Now, however, Nate has no such joy on his face. Deacon paces around the pad to where Nate is facing Dez, feeling something akin to anger bubbling up his throat. Dez watches him, her stare carefully blank. Nate doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, glancing around to Glory and High Rise at the back of the room. 

Instead of snapping at Nate, Deacon sucks in a barely calming breath. He wills his voice to be even when he speaks, if nothing else than to ensure if this is truly the last time he sees Nate, they don’t part screaming at each other. 

“You mind telling me what’s going on?” he says, trying to keep his tone light. 

Dez stares at him cooly, collected in a way he doesn’t feel. There’s something like a glimmer of guilt in her eyes, but it’s gone when he tries to search for it. “We can’t send you both,” she says. “They’ll know it’s us as soon as they see you.”

A reasonable assumption - why wouldn’t the Institute know who Deacon was? He’d fooled so many people up until now that it was easy to forget the Institute had technology that outdated anything created before and after the war. They had the ability to  _ create sentient life _ . Dez was right to deduce that they’d immediately connect two and two when they saw Deacon and Nate together. 

But to go behind Deacon’s back? To ensure he had no idea Nate would be going alone? Deacon snorts. What the hell? They’d gone over the plan dozens of times: he and Nate would warp in and snoop around until they figured out what they were up against. The Institute had to know Deacon was with him - maybe not who he was or who he worked for, but it was common knowledge among who Nate knew who he travelled with most. Sometimes Nick, Piper, or Curie would tag along, and more often than not Hancock and Preston would follow too if they were going to Goodneighbor or The Castle. Deacon had been careful in covering his tracks anywhere he went, and if people recognized him, he was efficient in removing any trace of his existence. 

But Deacon was a near constant since they’d met, their talents and personalities complimenting each other, Deacon’s intel and knowledge of the land and people more often than not giving Nate the edge he wouldn’t otherwise have. Why  _ wouldn’t  _ Deacon follow him into Hell itself?

He’s sure he’s dreaming now, because Nate wouldn’t agree to this. He turns his stare to Nate who looks away, something like shame hiding there in his eyes that Deacon can barely see. He swallows whatever hot remark he had, resigning himself to probably never saying it at all. Instead he pushes past Dez to stand as close to the teleporter as he dares, glaring up at Nate as Nate turns to look at him out of reflex. The shame and guilt is still there in his eyes, but so is an apology. Deacon’s heart melts. 

“Just stay safe,” Nate shouts over the noise. Ever the first to make right - Deacon shakes his head. “I’ll be back. I have to go in alone.”

Deacon huffs a laugh, the last of his anger boiling away. He knows why Nate has to do this - why he and Dez have secretly decided that no one else will be entering the wolve’s den with him. Every risk had been carefully calculated, and Deacon was a risk none of them could afford.

It would look exactly like it is, and the Railroad can’t risk that. Dez can’t risk that. Deacon can’t risk that. 

_ Nate  _ can’t risk that. 

Resigned, Deacon smiles at him. Still angry, but if this is what has to happen, so be it. 

“You come back,” Deacon shouts back. “Or I’m digging into the Institute myself.”

Nate laughs, but Deacon can’t hear it over the din of the nearby generator throttling up. He nods as Deacon feels Dez’s hand on his arm pulling him back, away from the pad as the lights on its three arms glow brighter. Nate pockets the Patriot holotape Dez gave him with a smile, open and so beautiful that Deacon’s heart aches. Tom shouts something Deacon doesn’t hear, Dez whispers “Good luck” to Deacon’s right, and then the room gets so hot and bright that even with sunglasses Deacon has to squeeze his eyes closed. 

And then, without any preamble, the room is quiet. When he opens his eyes, the entire room is dim, with only the emergency lights lining the base of the teleporter blinking sluggishly, casting a sickly yellow light back onto Tom at the computer bank. The generator throttles down, ticking and growling as it dies. Someone behind Deacon mumbles a curse - and then all the lights come on at once, clicking on as the generator in the other room restarts, revealing an empty teleporter pad. Deacon feels his stomach sink to the floor, every emotion inside him draining away, the world stopping as he stares at the empty pad. 

Nate had done too much to get here to just fade away. He knows, deep down, that the teleporter worked - Nate is out there somewhere, already charming himself into any and every sorry sap in the Institute. But it doesn’t make him feel better, even when Dez nudges him, her voice low in the quiet of the room as if to spare him the attention of the others. “We just have to wait now,” she says gently. He doesn’t respond beyond a shrug of his shoulder, his ears filled with the last ringing note of the teleporter shutting down when it sent Nate away. She doesn’t nudge him further. 

She does push him away from the pad though, and he only obeys because staring at the screens in front of Tom is slightly less depressing than staring at the pad. He doesn’t want to, but if they get any sort of notification from the teleporter receiver, then Nate made it. If they don’t, then Deacon doesn’t know what they’ll do.

Waiting is the last thing he wants to do. Betrayal and hurt are still bitter on his tongue; he wants nothing more than to chew Dez out for going behind his back on the details of the mission. Some part of him, deep down, knew this would happen. He wonders if she did it to put Deacon in his place, but when he turns to face her to read her face, he sees nothing in her expression that betrays her. Nothing but regret, and that at least he can’t argue. 

Tom turns away from the computer bank after they stand there staring at for several minutes, his expression hopeful but reserved. “We can’t expect a response here,” he says, more to the room at large than to Deacon and Dez standing close to him. “But we will get one. The teleporter worked - I’m not getting any errors on my end. So we just gotta wait ‘till he comes back.”

Someone breathes an exasperated sigh, either out of frustration for the wait or something similar. Dez turns to face the room, her boss face on again, and glares hard enough that everyone turns back around and resumes whatever small conversations they had before the teleporter had been powered up. She turns back to Tom and Deacon, sparing a glance for Glory as she approaches to hear new orders. She lights a cigarette and puffs a couple times before speaking. 

“Pack up and head back to HQ,” she says quietly. “Leave the teleporter here and have agents watch it. Preston’s Minutemen will guard the building, but no more than they do anything else here in Sanctuary. We can’t risk drawing attention more than we have.”

“What if he comes back through it?” Glory says, incredulous. “We just sit on our hands and wait?”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do. If he’s back home, then we send Deacon to fetch him,” Dez responds. She gestures to Deacon when she says his name, as if anyone in the room has any questions as to who she’s referring to. Deacon nods in affirmation and turns away to gather his things and leaves to hide in his room in the common house before Dez starts giving more orders. 

“It all work out?”

Deacon jumps as he’s heading into the common house, the voice to his left startling him out of his thoughts. He whips around to see Preston and Nick standing there, concerned expressions on their faces, both of their stares trained on him like he’s a wild animal. 

He shakes off the surprise and nods. He debates telling them nothing after that, but Nick and Preston have proven themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt. Preston’s people are guarding the teleporter to ward of suspicion in Sanctuary, and if Deacon remembers, he’s the sole reason Nate’s survived this long at all. He smiles something small at them, hopeful despite not feeling it, and moves to face them more directly. 

“Should’ve noticed all the lights dimmed a bit earlier,” Deacon remarks. “Kind of hard to not notice all that noise, either.”

Preston shrugs one shoulder, his expression turning easy. “Happens all the time. You get it all fixed, though? Wouldn’t want anything to go wrong.”

“Yeah,” Nick chimes in. “Scary stuff, lights going out in the middle of the night like this. Kids might get nightmares.”

Deacon realizes they’re speaking without revealing any information about what happened. He nods again to them in gratitude - he didn’t even think to speak in code to hide Railroad activities here in Sanctuary - and turns to look around, scoping like he should have when he left the teleporter warehouse, looking for anyone out of the ordinary. He doesn’t find anyone except for Dogmeat sniffing at a tree ten feet away, the road wet and clear, the snow melting quickly with the onset of spring coming near. Some lights are on in the windows of houses down the street, and Sturges is closing up the marketplace down the cul-de-sac. Everyone else must have turned in for the night. 

“You’ll tell us if anything changes?” Nick says, interrupting Deacon’s train of thought. 

Deacon turns to him and nods. He decides to speak discreetly, even with no visible ears or eyes in sight. Better safe than sorry with Dez still out of HQ. 

“I’ll monitor the situation. We wouldn’t want people’s power to go out when it’s still cold out.”

Preston smiles. “Thanks, man. Everyone will sleep better knowing you and Nate are on the job for us.”

Nate’s name makes Deacon tense - it must be a visible reaction, because Preston and Nick both reach out to touch him. He steps away from them, smiling as politely as his frayed nerves will allow, and turns back towards the common house. He gathers his things and readies for travel in the morning, forgoing sleep for a long night of drinking. 

The next morning, he gathers his things and whatever Nate had left behind, their guns, and Dogmeat, and heads out towards HQ. Dez and the rest of the Railroad agents had already left the day before - only hours after Nate had disappeared in a blink of light - carrying the hard drives and signal dishes from the teleporter as they went as discreetly as possible to HQ. They set up the dishes on scattered rooftops four blocks away after wiring them to Tom’s console, and when the drives are inserted and the computers come back online, there still hasn’t been a logged response from the teleporter in Sanctuary. 

Only a day of radio silence. Deacon loses hope and holes up at his desk, wrapped up in Nate’s summer leather jacket and a blanket, Dogmeat snoring at his feet. The rest of the agents and paper pushers in HQ seem to have the same idea, and by the time night rolls around, everyone is clustered away in their own cliques, drinking, playing card games, and listening to Travis confidently chatter away on the radio.  

“He  _ will _ come back,” Dez says some time that night, while the two of them lounge next to the war table. Tom is muttering to himself at his console, tinkering, glancing at the screen every other second as he works. Deacon watches him from the pair of tables reserved for him, Glory, Dez, and Carrington, near enough to the war table that Deacon can put his feet up on it. In a move he usually reserves for pissing off Carrington, he does so, stretching out, his legs crossing the walkway around the war table. His throat is so closed up with pent up anger and anxiety that he can’t muster an answer for Dez. 

She doesn’t seem offended by his silence or his disrespect. She strikes a match against his boot and uses it to light her cigarette, puffing on it and knocking the ash into her ashtray. He wraps himself tighter into Nate’s jacket and leans his head back onto his chair as he sinks into it, trying to force himself to sleep if Dez doesn’t feel like continuing their conversation. A couple minutes go by as he forces himself to relax, listening to the idle conversation around him, the clinking of glass and the shuffle of cards. As it starts working, he feels her hand pat his leg, drawing his attention back to her. 

“Don’t stay up waiting,” she says quietly. “Tom or Preston will send word if they see or hear from him.”

Then she’s gone, into her room to get whatever amount of rest any of them will get with how nervous they all are. He glances around the room, at all the milling agents and tourists holed up here in HQ, taking in some small kernel of courage from everyone’s restlessness, knowing they’re all just as anxious to know what happened as he is. It doesn’t make him feel better, nor does he find any strength knowing that Nate is most likely trying to take things slow out of caution. Deacon had gone radio silent dozens of times to preserve his cover, but now that he’s on the other end, he understands how Dez feels. It doesn’t settle the urgency inside him to go tearing through the wastes to find Nate, but he understands. 

So he “forces” himself to sleep - he drinks six shots of the nastiest whiskey Carrington has in his reserves, plays a couple card games with Glory because he’s masochistic, and sorts through his stuff because the alcohol makes him antsy. He finds sleep four hours after Dez retired, and when he wakes, he’s just as tired as he was the night before. Out of frustration he leaves HQ to run drops and continue whatever menial work no one else wants to do. The legwork, at least, keeps him from going stir crazy.

A week passes in silence. A week with no word from Nate. Deacon keeps up the pace, running updates between HQ, Sanctuary, and Diamond City, recruiting Nick and Piper at some point to go settle an Institute Gen 1 infestation in an old Railroad safehouse. They clear it in time to make it back to HQ by sundown, Deacon and Piper coming in with a smattering of cuts and bruises during the brawl and Nick’s left hip sticking every third or fourth step. Deacon instructs him to sit down at Carrington’s table so they can take a look when they get down the stairs to the crypt, his face turned towards the synth behind him to speak, not noticing the growing crowd clamoring around a familiar figure in the center of HQ. 

Nick and Piper freeze in their tracks as they clear the stairs, fixated on the sight ahead of them. Nick reaches out to grab Deacon’s shoulder as he turns around, his brow furrowed, confused. When he does so, he finds Nate standing there at the head of the war table, his hair clean and slicked back, his clothes crisp from detergent and his skin a shade lighter from the absence of dirt. All eyes glued to him snap to Deacon as he enters, but Deacon doesn’t acknowledge any of them - instead his eyes are glued to Nate’s face, the deadness in his eyes and the blank expression on his otherwise handsome features. 

Dez clears her throat beside him, her cigarette at her lips, her expression just as carefully blank. He hears her speak even with his heart thundering in his ears. 

“Wanderer made it into the Institute,” she says clearly. Nate flinches beside her - Deacon wants nothing more than to rush to him and hold him, but Nick holds him still, his fingers digging into his elbow, anchoring him in place. “He will make his report soon and we will go over it before deciding our next course of action. As of now, operations are resumed. Proceed normally. Do not overstep or back off - we need the Institute to assume we know nothing.”

An unsettled murmur rushes through the agents gathered, but with a flick of her wrist, Dez sends them buzzing. Paperwork flies and conversations start at an alarming volume, and just as people start to step away to continue their work, their eyes not so discreetly follow Dez, Carrington, Glory, and Nate filing away into Dez’s office. Nick doesn’t release Deacon, but he moves anyway, dragging him and Piper behind him after Dez. Deacon’s chest constricts, the week or so he spent in agony wondering if Nate was alive or not finally catching up with him. Piper closes the door behind her once they’re all in Dez’s office - a large space considering the crypt was built long ago, her desk littered with reports, bookcases filled with literature ranging from poetry to applied physics. Deacon’s eyes, however, don’t take in any of this besides an instinctual glance around the room. Instead he grabs Nate the first moment he can and pulls the other man into a hug, crushing his face into the clean collar of Nate’s shirt. The smell is unfamiliar, but the arms wrapped around him aren’t. 

A sigh shudders out of him, wheezing like he’d run a ten mile marathon. Nate’s nose digs uncomfortably under Deacon’s jaw but he doesn’t care - he almost lost Nate to the wolves. He isn’t letting go of him again if he can help it. 

“I have to - “ Nate starts. He jerks away, standing up straight as if he was shocked. Deacon touches his face, careful with so many eyes on him even with how much he trusts them. Nate’s expression closes, blank again like it was in the war room. He looks away to his boots, staring at the floor, his lashes getting dark with tears he tries to hide from the room. 

“The leader of the Institute,” he tries again, his voice gravelly. Everyone around him stills - Deacon’s heart jumps into his throat, suddenly choked and sick all at once. Nate shakes his head and scrubs his face with his clean sleeve, his voice thick when he speaks again, as if whatever truth he’s about to speak breaks him to his very core just thinking about it.

“The leader of the Institute… he’s my son.”

And in that moment, Deacon hates. 

 

+++


End file.
